by Jeff Carlson
Maybe it would be better just to vanish in a single white instant of nuclear fire. They wouldn’t suffer. They could stop running at last.
Cam thought of Nikola Ulinov, whom he could never meet. He thought of Ruth, furiously trying to outrace the tide of war. Despite everything, he felt still and quiet. He’d done what he could. Now it was out of his hands again. One way or the other he’d do everything he could to help Ruth. He continued to wait and watch as Allison joined the bustle of soldiers rushing to get out of this marked place.
24
The command bunker was hidden beneath an ordinary-looking Winnebago camper, like so many of the shelters in Grand Lake. Ruth almost didn’t get inside. The four soldiers stationed at the camper door were USAF air commandos and they’d unsafed their weapons as Ruth approached, which made her nervous and angry.
“I’m under orders, ma’am,” their captain said.
“Goddammit, so am I.”
“This is Dr. Goldman,” Estey said beside her, but Ruth thought her escort was part of the problem. Cam had asked Estey, Goodrich, and Foshtomi to stick with her. By now, the Rangers were accustomed to protecting her. Unfortunately, the USAF captain’s first responsibility was to consider everyone a threat.
“She’s the nanotech lady,” Estey said.
“I need to see Governor Shaug.” Ruth had new identification and showed it to them.
The captain didn’t move to take it, although one of his men turned his submachine gun aside and reached for the paperwork. “Call it in,” the captain told him. “The rest of you, back off a little, okay?”
“Okay,” Ruth said. They were all tense. They all expected to die and maybe it was worst for the USAF squad, standing with their backs against a safe hole—if the hole was safe. Ruth did not doubt that the bunkers could withstand conventional bombs or artillery, but Grand Lake’s engineers had almost certainly lacked the resources to build deep enough to survive a nuclear strike.
She glanced at the sky again and Foshtomi unconsciously mimicked the gesture beside her. The impulse was too powerful. Camouflage netting stretched from the camper to a nearby trailer, however, forming a roof over its door and the space in between. Ruth felt blind. It was silly, but it calmed her when she could see empty sky and she looked up again even though she knew the netting was there. Stop it, she thought. She turned to watch the USAF troops instead. The man with her paperwork had gone to a phone mounted on the camper wall, and Ruth tried to figure out how the command shelter maintained links with its radio, radar, cell, and satellite arrays without creating a hub of electronic noise for the enemy to pinpoint. Maybe they’d run lines all over the mountain to disperse their signals, hiding their dishes and transceivers in other campers and tents. Did it matter?
She missed Cam. They should have been together at the end, but he’d quietly listened to her and he’d nodded and then he was gone. Deborah hadn’t been so easy to convince, but she’d left, too, and now Ruth was alone. The Rangers weren’t friends. They had never warmed to her, despite her respect for them and the blood loss they’d shared.
“Foshtomi,” Ruth said. The young woman turned, and Ruth tried to smile. “Thank you,” she said.
“Sure.”
No, I mean it, Ruth thought, but the USAF trooper hung up his telephone and said, “Goldman, you’re clear.”
“I need these three,” Ruth said.
“No, ma’am,” the captain said. He waved for her to walk forward from the others. “We going to pat you down. Take off your jacket, please.”
“I need them,” Ruth said tightly, hoping not to let her adrenaline show in her voice. “Tell Shaug.”
“We’re locked down, ma’am.”
“Tell Shaug I need them or I can’t guarantee the next step of the booster will work. They’re some of the original carriers.” The last part was almost true. Another scientist might have questioned her, but she didn’t think Governor Shaug or the military command would argue. They were too desperate for any advances in the nanotech.
“All right.” The captain pointed for his man to return to the phone. Meanwhile, he slung his weapon and ran his hands closely over Ruth’s body, not shy at all about her crotch, waist, or armpits. He noticed her cell phone, of course, and pulled it from her front pocket.
“I need that to call the lab,” she said.
He did not find the tiny glass welds she’d made on the back sides of two of her shirt buttons.
* * * *
The stairwell went down farther than Ruth had anticipated. Her phone almost certainly wouldn’t work. That was a serious problem. Ruth looked back once before the door sealed, rubbing her thumb inside her palm as if she still had her etched stone. Then the cold in the tunnel raised goose bumps along her arms and neck and she stumbled on the concrete steps.
Estey caught her. “Careful,” he said.
The stairs were very steep. Ruth quickly passed through four giant steel doors, each one about a full story below the next. They made a series of buffers meant to absorb and deflect a blast. Maybe the bunker would survive. Each of the barricades had to be opened and then dogged shut again by the USAF colonel who’d come to lead them inside.
A fifth door led to a room about the size of a small house. It was crowded with computers, display screens, and people. The uproar of voices was amplified by the bare concrete walls and ceiling. This place was a box, and Ruth guessed that it held more than a hundred soldiers. Most were seated along the banks of equipment. Others stood or walked in the paths in between. The vast majority of the uniforms were Air Force blue, but there were also people in tan or olive drab and Ruth saw more than one knot of civilians.
“This way,” the colonel said.
Ruth went left when he moved right. He seemed to be heading to a door across from them, but Ruth had seen Governor Shaug inside a glass-walled office. She walked straight at him.
“Dr. Goldman?” Estey said, and the USAF colonel hollered, “Stop that woman!” The busy people clotted around her. Two men and a woman caught her arms, one of them dropping a handful of printouts on the floor. A fourth soldier rose from his seat with his headset cockeyed around his neck.
“Let go of me!”
“Sergeant? What’s going on?” The colonel directed his words at Estey instead of Ruth. It was another way of containing her, she realized.
“Sir, I’m not sure,” Estey said, but he gestured at the glass office. None of the people inside had noticed them yet. “I think she was just trying to talk to the governor,” Estey said.
“That’s right,” Ruth said.
The colonel stared at her. “You don’t go anywhere I don’t tell you. Understand?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“They’ll join us in a minute,” the colonel said. “I’m taking you to a spare office.”
“Okay. Yes.” No, she thought. Ruth wanted to be in the heart of their operations when she spoke with Shaug and his generals. If there was any hope of silencing her, they would take it. She couldn’t afford to be isolated.
She got lucky. The governor finally noticed the disruption out in the main room. He strode to the glass door of the office. Perfect. As he pushed through he lifted his hand, hello, not understanding the situation. A man in a blue uniform walked after him and then a woman in Army green.
The soldiers released her. For a moment, Ruth was free. One of them bent to gather his printouts from the floor, and the data tech returned to his seat. Ruth yanked her cell phone from her pocket. “Stop right there,” she said. She pointed the small black plastic casing at Shaug like a gun, yelling now as the soldiers converged on her again. “Stop!”
They came very close to taking her down. The data tech froze with his hand on her sleeve. Another man stood at her shoulder, and the colonel had drawn his pistol. They couldn’t know what she intended, but in the twenty-first century, a phone could be a weapon. A phone could trigger explosives or signal troops.
“Everyone get back,” Ruth said.
She turned slightly to aim her fist at the data tech, stepping away from him and the other man, creating a thin space for herself in the crowd. “Listen to me. The war is over.”
They didn’t hear her. “Put it down,” the colonel said, and Shaug called, “What are you doing?”
Other conversations continued in the room. Except for a few men and women immediately beside her, the soldiers were absorbed with their work, and Ruth wondered how many lives she’d already jeopardized across the U.S. by interrupting radio calls. One girl remained at her console, talking into her headset even as she watched Ruth’s face. “That’s a roger, Jay Three. Expect them on your north side,” the girl said.
Ruth winced and clenched her fist again on her cell phone. She needed to steady herself. “The war is over,” she said. “I’m forcing a truce.”
“You can’t,” Shaug began.
“Put it down.” The colonel aimed his gun in her face. Three other soldiers had pulled their sidearms, but Ruth continued to hold up her phone.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
The colonel racked the slide of his 9mm Beretta without pointing it away from her first, chambering a shell. Ruth felt herself go white as something in her chest lurched—heart, lungs. “I’m not warning you again,” the colonel said.
Estey stepped in front of her. “Wait.” He’d lifted his arms from his sides, making himself bigger as he walked into the muzzle of the colonel’s gun.
Goodrich did the same on her other side. “Everyone just wait,” he said, increasing the safe zone around her.
Ruth was astonished. She had wondered long and hard why Cam asked these three to escort her and only these three, excluding Ballard and Mitchell. She wouldn’t have thought that Estey could let go of his authority, and yet Cam had been very right about him, his exhaustion and his grief. Estey wanted to believe that she knew some way out.
Foshtomi acted alone. Foshtomi grabbed Ruth’s hair and spun her sideways, chopping her arm down on Ruth’s hand. She knocked Ruth’s phone into the row of computer consoles. Then she slammed Ruth’s hip and shoulder blades down onto the hard shapes of the desk, a keyboard, two card cases, and a PDA.
“No,” Foshtomi said. Her lovely face was twisted with fury as she cocked one fist high behind her own ear. Ruth tried to block it and missed. Foshtomi’s knuckles glanced off her teeth, cracking her skull back against the messy surface of the console.
Goodrich clawed at Foshtomi, but he was dragged back by another man. Estey didn’t even get that close. One of the other soldiers clubbed Estey with his pistol and Estey banged into an overturned chair.
“Wait—” Ruth coughed, spitting blood.
“You crazy bitch. We died for you,” Foshtomi shouted, and it was true. Wesner. Park. Somerset. Ruth didn’t know how many more had been hurt or killed with Hernandez in the ground assaults out of Sylvan Mountain, but that number must be in the thousands. They were exactly why she was here.
“Nanotech,” Ruth said.
Foshtomi only struggled to hit her again, wrestling with the men who’d surrounded them. “No!” Foshtomi yelled, not at the soldiers but still trying to deny Ruth. Cam had misjudged her— maybe because she was cute. Maybe she’d never invested as much hope in Ruth as the rest of them. It didn’t matter. Foshtomi’s left hand was snarled in the front of Ruth’s shirt, bumping and pulling at the buttons Ruth had altered with liquid glass, creating miniscule air bubbles against the plastic.
“I’m wearing nanotech!” Ruth screamed. “Get her off! Get her off me now!”
The USAF colonel threw Foshtomi aside but leaned into her place himself. He pressed his weapon against the underside of Ruth’s jaw, forcing her head back. She was too scared to hold still. She tried to pat at her shirt to see if the buttons were there and the colonel immobilized her wrist with his other hand, bent over her body and the computer console. He twisted her arm—her bad arm—and Ruth cried out. Then someone else caught her other hand. She saw Estey pinned to the computers beside her, a submachine gun at the back of his head. No less than a dozen USAF commandos stood behind the colonel, and yet Ruth grinned at them over the smooth-edged bulk of his pistol.
“Let me up,” she said.
“Where is Cam!?” Foshtomi yelled, imprisoned herself by three soldiers. “Where’s her friend?”
“The war is over,” Ruth told them, bleeding and desperate. She licked at the coppery warm gore on her lips as if the wounds belonged to someone else. She was even glad for the pain, because it hurt less than the ice in her heart. “Listen to me,” she said. “There’s no other way. I have nanotech that will push the Chinese all the way back to California, but unless you do exactly what I say it’ll kill our side, too.”
The colonel did not release her, although he glanced down at her shirt. “Oh, shit,” he said.
Ruth Goldman had turned traitor again.
* * * *
“Why are you doing this?” Shaug asked, and General Caruso said, “Think what you’re doing. It’s not too late. We could use this to surprise them.”
“No.” Ruth tried to hold still in her chair. She wanted to project only strength, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Her back was covered with bruises. Her lips were torn and swollen. A medic had treated her quickly, putting one stitch in her upper lip and then covering it with gauze and tape. The bandage felt awkward against her nose. She kept lifting her good hand to fidget with it.
“If we had time to coordinate,” Caruso said. “If you just gave us a few days.”
“No.” Ruth was anxious, but that worked in her favor. They were jumpy, too, because she held one of the buttons between her finger and thumb. With every gesture, they flinched.
Shaug had been the first to recover after the colonel let her up. We can get someone to take care of you, he’d suggested. He wanted to move her into the glass-walled office, but Ruth declined. She needed witnesses. She needed the leadership to have as little control over this information as possible.
The data tech who’d joined the struggle was back at his console, and the girl beside him never stopped talking into her headset, coordinating with fighter teams out over Nevada. Everywhere in the large room, people had returned to their tasks—but they were aware of Ruth. The din of voices continued to lull. They were talking about her. Some of them had heard what she’d said. They told the rest, and from here the truth would eventually reach U.S. and Canadian populations up and down the Continental Divide. From here, she could reach the enemy.
“This is treason,” Caruso said.
This is the real start of it, Ruth thought. Not the bombing. Not the invasion. Today. This is peace.
The pride she felt was inescapable. It burned brightly inside her, competing with her fear and her shame, because more people would die because she hadn’t been able to do this sooner. Her anguish reminded her of her time in Nevada, thirsty and hyper-aware of her connection with everything around her.
Everything she’d done in thirty-six years had led her to this point. All of the false turns and mistakes seemed not to be mistakes in the end. Each discovery had added to her skill set, no matter how small. This was the reason for her life.
She badly wanted to convince these men of it, but if necessary she would force them instead.
“I want that cell line open,” she said.
“You haven’t thought this all the way through,” Shaug said, trying again to distract her.
“Open that cell line now. Are you listening to me? If I don’t talk to my friends in the next twenty minutes, the nanotech will hit us first. It’ll work in the enemy’s favor. Please. Put me on the phone.”
The command bunker was too far down. Her phone was useless, but she knew they could connect her to the cell towers outside through any of a hundred comm lines. They were dragging their feet. They’d run her request over to a man in the next row of equipment, distancing it from her. Then another soldier came back to say the towers were overloaded and they’d patch her in as soon a
s they could interrupt the call traffic up top.
They were probably searching for the physical location of the two cell numbers she’d given them. Was that even possible? She had to assume yes. If they couldn’t trace those phones electronically, they would be organizing troops and helicopters. It was a mistake to let them have any more time.
Ruth got to her feet. “Don’t push me,” she said, looking for Estey and Goodrich. She’d demanded their release and the two Rangers stood nearby.
Foshtomi was gone. Foshtomi had cursed all three of them until Shaug cut his hand through the air and the USAF commandos led her away, wild with scorn. Why are you helping her? Foshtomi shouted. Goodrich especially seemed to be uncertain. Estey looked straight ahead, nearly holding himself at attention, whereas Goodrich watched the floor, unable to meet the eyes of the other soldiers gathered in front of them.
Ruth didn’t doubt that both men regretted what they’d done, but she was hopeful. History was behind them. Today was July 2nd, close enough to the Fourth, the birthday of their nation, and in a very real sense their actions were a revolution. If they could end the war, it meant freedom, not only from the Chinese but from their own leadership.
“I’m making my calls,” she said.
Caruso stood up as if to block her way. “We just don’t use the cell network down here,” he said. “We need a few minutes.”
“No.” Ruth held up her button. Caruso backed off. Then she walked through the dense rows of men and women, doing her best to ignore their faces. Estey had the right idea. These people were hostile and confused, and she couldn’t let any of it affect her. She stopped beside the comm specialist who had been given her numbers. Caruso and Shaug were right behind her, along with Estey and most of the USAF commandos.
“Goldman!” Shaug said.
She raised her voice to match. “If I crack this seal, everyone in this room will be breathing nanotech in seconds. Put me on the phone. Now.”
“It will get you, too,” Shaug said.
“I knew that when I walked in here.” Ruth blinked suddenly, not wanting him to see her tears—but her honesty rattled them more than any threat.