Raffa jumped out and ran toward them, grabbing Massarra the moment he reached them. Together they supported her, her own legs stronger now. Jess pushed her in first, saw her climb up the ladder. Raffa was behind her, so she went next.
She shouldn’t have.
Just as she turned to grab Raffa, he jerked to one side. A fine explosion of red burst from his shoulder, spattering a glaze of crimson onto the steps and fuselage. Jess screamed and reached for him as he stumbled. Another hand came down.
Giovanni grabbed the boy.
They hauled him in, face and chest first, taking in the steps and dragging the door shut. The Twin Otter bounced on the uneven ground, and in seconds was airborne.
Chapter 3
Southern Libya
“Strap in,” Jess shouted. “Everyone strap in. Now!”
Giovanni stumbled to the back of the cabin as the aircraft limped off the ground, steadying himself with his hands on the interior of the fuselage. He brought back a first-aid kit and tore it open. Massarra propped herself up, her left arm hanging uselessly. The tanks of gas sloshed back and forth, and it stank, giving Jess a headache already.
“Open a window,” she yelled. They were a flying bomb.
Jess tore away Raffa’s clothing to expose the glistening wound. She took padding and bandages and pressed them hard against the shoulder. Raffa moaned and bucked, grimacing.
“Stay still. We need to stop the bleeding.”
“Is there an exit wound?” Giovanni asked.
“The bullet hit in the back and come through the front. I saw it.”
“Then we need to stop the bleeding in both.”
“Giovanni, go ask Peter how long before we have to land to refuel. Go, ask him now.”
He nodded and disappeared. Jess continued to work on Raffa, trying to stem the flow of blood seeping from both wounds.
Giovanni staggered back through the aisle. “In six hours we’ll need to refuel. We’ll have to camp overnight; it’s too dangerous to fly at night. Then another six hours after that to Tanzania tomorrow morning.”
“Damn it.”
“How bad is it?”
“He was lucky. The bullet went straight through and didn’t hit a major artery. If we clean both wounds and stop the bleeding, he stands a good chance—but we need antibiotics and plasma.”
“Everyone should get some sleep,” Massarra said. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us on the ground out there. We’ll need a secure perimeter and that means people who are alert and refreshed.”
They exchanged a look that carried an unspoken understanding. All were exhausted, physically and emotionally. Mentally drained. “How’s your arm?”
“I can hold a pistol.”
“Ufuk’s drone can use thermal imaging to give us some idea what’s nearby, but we’ll be landing at dusk. It won’t be easy.”
The Otter was skimming the bottom of the low clouds, the engines revved down and cruising comfortably by the time Raffa was stable enough for Jess to find a seat and gather herself. Nobody was chasing them. No white streaks in the sky. Nothing on the drone’s radar ahead of them. Just mile after mile of undulating sand.
An arm came round her, taking her shoulders and holding them tight. Giovanni sat beside her. “You okay?”
“Are you?” She shook her head. “Raffa—”
“Made his own choice, and we should admire him for it. It took guts. You should be proud of him.”
She closed her eyes. How many had died? That trusted her?
“He won’t die,” Giovanni whispered.
“This is my fault.”
“You should sleep.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Just try.” He maneuvered her head against his shoulder, adjusting his position. Hector squeezed onto the other side of her on the bench with blanket and pressed himself against her. The Otter’s engines droned. She closed her eyes.
She woke as the Otter began its descent, the sudden drop lurching her from sleep.
Six hours had felt like six minutes. Cradling Hector, she leaned to look out the window. Still an abyss of gray sand. It was darker now. She unbuckled herself and made her way to check on Raffa. He was asleep. His chest rising and falling gave her some relief. Sweat gathered on his face. His skin was hot.
She went forward to the cockpit.
Ufuk greeted her with a short nod. “There’s a quiet place to set down not far from us now. We’ll be down in ten minutes.”
The engines droned.
“I saw a disease in Al-Jawf. In some of the children,” Jess said quietly.
“This is radiation sickness,” Ufuk replied even more quietly. “More will be affected in time.”
“Like radioactive? From the nuclear blasts?”
“There will be some sickness from that, but this, I am talking about positron radiation exposure. From the harsh geomagnetic solar storms induced by Nomad. If you were above ground, your DNA was exposed to very high doses of positrons. It affects children more strongly.”
“What about Hector?”
“He is older, and was underground for the worst of it. From what you said.”
“How bad will it get? I mean, the radiation poisoning?”
“There is really no way to know. I suspect this was why they refused entry of some people into Al-Jawf. With the strange disease. Not contagious. But not understood.”
Jess processed the new information.
The engines droned on.
“This place we’re going to,” Jess said. “Müller knew about it, right? You said the Administrative Council wanted it?”
“That’s right. And they want my drone technology and other facilities around the world. My drone technology is not air-breathing like this plane, not like their drones. By the end of three thousand kilometers, the carburetors of this plane will be useless. My drones use liquid hydrogen.”
“But are you sure this facility is still secure? And I mean, if they know you’re gone, and you’re telling me Müller bombed Sanctuary—“
“I don’t know that. I suspect it.”
“Then why wouldn’t he just wreck your Tanzania facility too?”
“It’s intact. That’s all the information I have right now. We will learn more as we get closer.”
“So where are we?”
“Some way north of Juba in South Sudan. According to my digital topography, there is a cluster of hills a few kilometers long with a field between them. I’m going to head for that. If we’re where I think we are.” He tried to smile, then rolled his shoulders. He looked tired.
“How are you both feeling?” Jess asked.
“The weather’s been kind,” Peter replied. “Had to swing around a rain shower and some low cumulus, but Ufuk’s been handling the navigation. How’s the kid, Raffa?”
“Sleeping, but hot. Feverish.”
“Go strap in back there. This might be a bit bumpy.”
The heavy landing felt more like a crash landing, but the Otter rolled to a stop safely.
“Get everything out that we don’t need,” Jess repeated.
It had been a long night, and the first creeping light was just coloring the horizon. The sun wasn’t the only thing on the move. High above them, Ufuk’s drone had circled, its thermal imaging keeping track of a settlement two miles to their west, just over the hummock of hill they’d landed between. At the very first light, a group of red dots had started to move.
And not just leave.
They were headed their way.
Jess slipped the M4’s single point harness over her ballistic vest and leaned her head inside the plane, her headlamp flashing. “What’s that bag? Do we need that?”
“MRE rations and water,” Giovanni replied, kneeling between the seats.
“Dump it.”
“Are you serious?”
“We only need to get seven more hours in the air.”
“What if we can’t—”
“If we run out of fuel, we ain�
��t getting anywhere. So dump it.”
As soon as they landed, they’d unloaded the fuel canisters and refueled what they could into the plane. It was messy, but Peter estimated they had about nineteen hundred liters left, and sixteen hundred kilometers to go. More than enough, said Peter. He hoped.
Hope wasn’t enough.
They needed to lighten their load.
Jess spent half the night with a hacksaw from their toolkit, sawing off legs of two benches. Ufuk and Peter had slept, and Massarra as well, leaving just herself and Giovanni to stand watch, although all that was really needed was to monitor the tablet. They left all their lights off. It was as black as an oil slick. No stars. No moon.
Just Raffa’s intermittent moaning.
He’d lost a lot of blood, and had a nasty fever, but was stable. Ufuk said he had a medical room at the Tanzania location. And an airstrip. He assured her that nobody could have entered it. Automated defenses. Drones. And the area was deserted even before Nomad, except for the Maasai.
Hector worked away beside Giovanni, passing him bags to check.
At least it was warmer as they neared the equator. Jess didn’t even need a jacket to go outside, but the ash fall seemed thicker here than in Al-Jawf. At least a foot of the slurry covered the ground. They were getting near the Great Rift Valley, Ufuk had explained, and suspected a massive volcanic event nearby. The ash would make for a difficult take off, and had almost ripped off the undercarriage when they landed.
“Please leave that,” Massarra said from the back of the plane.
Jess poked her head back inside. “What?”
Hector was tugging on a large green rucksack. Giovanni put one hand on it, but Massarra, wedged in the back seat of the aircraft, swatted him away.
“Don’t touch what?” Jess asked again.
“It’s private.”
“Nothing here is private.” Now Jess had to know.
Massarra was acting weird, in a way she’d never seen her act before. Jess clambered up into the aircraft and leaned into the back. She pulled the rucksack roughly from Massarra’s weak grip. They were in a hurry. This wasn’t a time for games.
It was heavy.
Fifty pounds at least.
She opened the top of the bag. What hell was it? A sleek metal container, it looked like a massive cellphone with sleek curves and a glowing skin. At least three feet long.
“Put that down,” growled a voice.
Jess turned. It was Ufuk. She hadn’t heard him speak with that tone before.
“What is this? Is it a battery?” That didn’t make much sense. Why would Ufuk have hidden a battery from her? She looked inside the bag again. And it seemed to be connected to a battery itself. It looked…futuristic was all she could think of.
“It’s a critical piece of equipment,” Ufuk replied.
“That does what exactly?” His tone, his countenance, the way he hovered, it made Jess nervous. Then she noticed he had his pistol in his hand. A tingling dread shivered from her scalp into her fingertips. “Wait, is this a bomb?”
“Step away, Jessica.” Ufuk had backed up, but still had the pistol in his hand.
“Guys, whoever is coming, they’re getting closer,” Peter said from the front of the plane. “I gotta' get the engines rotating.”
A boiling fury seeped away Jess’s dread. She grabbed Hector and pulled him back, jumped backward out of the door and took him with her. She raised her M4, pointed it right at Ufuk. Giovanni followed her. She stood squarely in front of the lean-to tent Raffa was in. With a sputtering roar, the Twin Otter’s engines roared to life, blasting them in a rush of air and ash.
“Get back in the airplane,” Ufuk yelled.
“Not with that thing in it.”
Ufuk held up his hands. “Then I will get out and take it with me, but then you’re not going to my facility in Tanzania. And neither is Massarra.”
Jess glanced at Raffa. In the dim light he glistened with sweat.
“What is it? Why won’t you tell me?” she demanded, turning back to Ufuk.
“It is a critical piece of equipment, that is all I can tell you.”
The engines’ roar whined higher and higher. It started to roll forward, the slurry of ash squishing away from the oversized tundra tires.
“Guys, get in the goddamn plane!” Peter screamed.
Chapter 4
Ulan Bator, Mongolia
The Czilim hovercraft surged over the icy water, throwing spray over the windows faster than the wipers could clear it. The savage wind, frigid and bitter, froze it almost as soon as it struck the glass. From time to time, Zasekin was forced to slow the craft and send Vasily out onto the deck in front to chip away at the ice. After the ninth ice-clearing, he decided instead to stop completely and allow everyone to warm themselves with hot drinks and to eat. It offered them all some respite from the deafening roar of the engines and the stale air inside the cabin.
Moreover, the longer they went, the more his own concentration wavered and Timur’s eyes grew tired. The Czilim was heavy and cumbersome to drive over such long distances. The bow dipped frequently, and the wheel was ponderous and heavy. Very likely the neoprene on the skirt was freezing and offering less lift.
Better they stop and clean, he thought. Rest and eat, and find some warmth through hot coffee, no matter how bitter the taste of the over-used grounds. Timur estimated Terelj was another two or three hours away at most. Morale was important in conditions like these, in a situation like this. Pushing them for too long would be counter-productive.
He selected a small inlet in the river, a quiet break in the bank where a steep crag lifted upward, out of the water and toward the skirt of a steep, pine-soaked hill.
Zasekin stepped out of the Czilim’s hatch and stood on deck as the others either busied themselves preparing the coffee or warming food to eat. He took out a cigarette, Java Zolotaya, which was all that had been available when last he was in Irkutsk, and lit it. It was a luxury he usually reserved for the conclusion to the hardest days, but today had been hard and he was tired. He pulled on it, savoring its rough bitterness and exhaled slowly.
Timur came out to join him and handed him a steel mug with coffee.
“Thank you.”
Timur rolled his neck and sighed. “It’s getting late. It will be dark by the time we get close to Terelj.”
“Perhaps we should camp a little way from the town,” Zasekin said. “You and I could take a look while the others sleep.”
Timur nodded. “A good plan.”
“Have Vasily and Evgeny clean the skirts,” Zasekin said. “Tell them to use the shovel first, then scrape off the rest. And tell them to wrap up warm. We don’t have enough antibiotics for anyone to get ill.”
Timur disappeared inside, but it took a little while before Zasekin eventually heard the side hatch open and the clang of steel as they two of them stumbled out with shovels and scrapers. He thought he heard Evgeny murmuring something, no doubt some invective aimed at him, but Zasekin decided to ignore it. Without looking at them, he finished his cigarette and dropped down into the pilot’s seat again. He watched Vasily make his way around to the front of the craft, stepping lightly over rocks to get to the skirt without touching the icy water.
The first bullet appeared to miss Vasily by some distance, perhaps as much as a meter. It struck the branch of a tree and sheared it away, tossing splinters and torn bark into the river. Vasily reacted slowly, rooted to spot in confusion, as though the sound of gunfire was too surprising to be capable of belief in a place like this.
Timur reacted with lightning speed. He had made his way out to the deck of the Czilim, Zasekin could now see, and screamed at Vasily to find cover. A second bullet this time found its mark and struck Vasily somewhere in the shoulder or upper arm. He was already stumbling into the pine forest beside the river so the precise location was impossible to say. His scream echoed in Zasekin’s ears.
“Misha,” he roared. “The Kalashnikov!”
>
Dependable Misha was already there, already securing the machine gun into his shoulder and getting ready to fire.
Yet fire at what?
Zasekin ran to the armament locker and tore it open. More shots rang out. “Find them, Timur Ivanovych,” he shouted as he took hold of his Dragunov rifle. “Find us something to shoot at.”
Evgeny appeared behind him and took a Kalash along with an extra magazine. Zasekin seized him by the shoulders and looked at him.
“Vasily is hurt,” he said. “Do you understand? I will find them, but you must get to him.”
Evgeny nodded with enthusiasm. Whatever his problems with Zasekin, Evgeny had always displayed affection for the young Vasily. Sometimes it had seemed like more than just friendship, but whatever Zasekin’s views of that, at least that meant he would do whatever he could to protect the younger man.
“How will you find them?” he asked, but Zasekin had already taken a Kalash and levered himself through the main hatch.
“What have you seen, Timur Ivanovych?” he said, head low, behind the rim of the Czilim’s cabin. Zasekin handed him the Kalash.
Timur, crouched low with the night-vision device in his hands, pointed to a ridge enfolded within a fringe of pine. “At least two, perhaps more. What are you doing?”
“Going to find them. Shoot now, so they do not see that I am coming.”
Timur nodded and raised the weapon. After a moment, he began firing at the ridge.
Zasekin jumped from the Czilim onto the steep bank, climbing to find cover within the twisted bark of the pine trees. Needles laden with frozen snow and ash whipped his face and he ran, but he ignored the pain and kept moving. His breath fogged in front of him as he ran. Suddenly he was Zasekin the boy again, hunting with his grandfather, at home in the snow-clad mountains of Buryat. Wrapped in fur, the sweet smell of pine feathering his nostrils, the edge of unease trembling in his fingers as he crept between the trees, searching for his prey. Quiet, as much a part of the wilderness surrounding him as every other creature that dwelled here. Moving at first quickly, then more slowly as he approached his prey.
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