by Jeff Carlson
Cam knelt with his two friends. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been talking,” Ruth said. She seemed apologetic, even wary.
“You know we have to push these guys,” Cam said.
“That’s not it,” Newcombe said.
“I think we’d better try for our rendezvous,” Ruth said quickly. “The plane. I’m sorry, Cam. I’m sorry. My feet…I don’t think I can hike any more. And these guys can spread the vaccine for us now.”
I could, too, Cam thought, an instant before he understood that her worried frown held the same idea.
She didn’t want him to stay behind, but he didn’t want to keep going with her. She was his only hope of becoming whole again, developing powerful new nanotech to rebuild the damage to his skin and his insides, but how realistic was that? It was a dream. That was all. It would be years before scientists like her had any time or energy to spare, and even then what they knew best were weapons — simple, attacking technology like the plague and the vaccine. Sawyer had talked of immortality, but in the same breath he’d admitted he spent years just building the prototype that became the plague.
Cam didn’t want to be her dog, and Newcombe could protect her, and these boys needed help. They needed someone to lead them. He could begin to reorganize the survivors here and take the ‚rst small, dif‚cult steps to try to rebuild.
Even if the vaccine wasn’t 100 percent effective, it was enough, and what if her plane was shot down? What if she never reached safety? It was crucial to save as many people as possible before next winter. Someone, somewhere, had to have a chance to reclaim the lowlands, and there might never be a better start than the opportunity presented by the Scouts.
“Newcombe still has his radio codes,” Ruth said. “The Canadians can send a plane that can touch down on a road or a meadow. Somewhere close.”
“As close as they can,” Newcombe said.
Cam only nodded. I should stay here, he thought.
12
In the high mountains south of Leadville, the night was calm but vicious. Clouds blocked out most of the sky, heavy and still, but the temperature had plummeted, an invisible sort of motion as if the ground itself was lifting away. Major Hernandez clapped his gloves together and †exed his shoulders, not liking the impression of nervousness but too cold to help himself. “Better make this quick,” he said.
“Hell yes, sir,” Gilbride answered.
It was better in the bunkers. The holes acted like buckets, retaining the thin heat of the day, but they couldn’t risk whispering through their plans with four or ‚ve other Marines packed in around them. The wrong word might ruin everything.
Two hours ago Sergeant Gilbride had barely made it back to camp before full dark, sweating hard, which could be dangerous in this environment. The moisture would freeze inside his clothes. Hernandez had ordered him to dig out a clean uniform and to get a little food and ‚nally he’d gestured for Gilbride to step outside, nominally to help double-check the night watch.
“You’re okay?” Hernandez asked.
“Yes, sir,” Gilbride said, but his voice was a rasp and he’d been coughing when he returned to their peak. Gilbride couldn’t stop scratching at his neck or the underside of his left arm, either, where his skin was dry and red. Their medic had smeared these irritated patches with gun oil, but Hernandez couldn’t spare enough to constantly medicate his friend’s rashes.
Gilbride was allergic to this elevation. That was the short truth of it, and yet Hernandez continued to make demands on his endurance.
“I don’t know about Ward,” Gilbride said, “but Densen is scared. I’m sure he’ll want to talk more.”
“They’ll both send runners in a couple days?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we’ll just keep feeling them out,” Hernandez said, watching the dark sea above him. The thick, unmoving clouds didn’t smell like snow, but that could change and it would be a problem. It would keep them in their trenches and he couldn’t afford the delay. “I’ve met Ward,” he said. “He’s tough.”
“Yes.”
Hernandez nodded unhappily. “And it’s going to be as much like summer as it gets up here for the next few months. He might not come around. Not in time.”
U.S. Army Lieutenant Ward occupied a ridge two miles to their east with thirty men. Marine Colonel Densen was positioned another four miles beyond Ward with a group of a hundred and ‚fty. All were artillery-and-infantry units — they were meant to harass an air invasion just like Hernandez — but the rebel assault out of New Mexico had yet to come and they didn’t know why. Leadville had only told them to stay ready in the last radio alert.
“Walk with me,” Hernandez said. He had to maintain the ‚ction that he’d gone outside to check on the other shelters, so they’d make an appearance at Bunker 4.
There was very little starlight, but the moon was rising in the east and had yet to disappear into the clouds. For another twenty minutes, the bone-white arc of the moon would remain visible between the jagged black earth and the smooth line of the clouds overhead.
Hernandez didn’t look directly at the gleaming light because it would blind him. His eyes felt huge and sensitive. Instead he followed the muted thud of his own boots against the pale rock, moving slowly but with con‚dence. It was a world of silence and shapes. Gilbride stumbled and Hernandez turned and caught his arm. “Easy, Nate,” he said.
He thought the attacks out of New Mexico might not come. It looked like something big was developing. The rebels must be aware of it, too. In fact, the rebels probably knew more than Hernandez, because they had satellite coverage, whereas he was still radio silent.
Three days ago, a huge †ight of C-17 and C-130J cargo transports had lifted out of Leadville — forty-‚ve planes by his count. The †eet went southeast in two groups, the C-17s outpacing the older, prop-driven C-130Js. Where were they going? Each group had also been accompanied by a ‚ghter escort of six F-22 Raptors, but Hernandez didn’t ‚gure it was an offensive against New Mexico or Arizona. For one thing, an assault would have come back within hours.
Hernandez believed the Russian evacuation was ‚nally in play. The transports must have gone around the world, but ‚rst they’d taken an angle to elude the rebels and the Canadians. So why didn’t New Mexico attack? Leadville was short on air power and he wasn’t sure the rebel leaders would hold back to avoid upsetting the diplomacy between Leadville, India, and the Russians. Or maybe they would. The rebels might hope to ally themselves with the new Indo-Russian state after defeating Leadville. They could be delaying to keep from threatening the Russian evacuation in any way. Far stranger deals had happened in other wars.
Hernandez was deep into a smaller conspiracy himself. For eight days now he had been using his sergeants to make contact with other nearby units. Delicate work. The ‚rst overture was simply that Gilbride and Lowrey went in person, off the radio. Then it was discussing each other’s vulnerabilities and how to cover each other, what supplies do you need, I can spare some blankets if you’ll give me aspirin.
The decision to send Gilbride and Lowrey as runners was also a cautious signal to his own troops. There was no way to conceal his sergeants’ absence for two or three days at a time. More than that, simply by exploring around him, Hernandez had acknowledged the anger and the desperation of his Marines.
He’d also made twice as many ‚eld promotions as he’d intended, giving stripes to eleven troopers. Most of the new ranks were deserved. One was awarded in the hope of pacifying a troublemaker. It couldn’t last. Very soon Hernandez would have to deliver something substantial, and he was reluctant to cross that line, because it would be a commitment. It would be treason. And yet the calendar was speeding by. June 2nd seemed like a long way from winter, but the seasons changed early at this elevation. Hernandez only had another ten or twelve weeks to ‚gure out what the hell he was doing before snow was a certainty.
Stay loyal? Break away? He had no way to move south witho
ut being airlifted, and he couldn’t see the rebel forces in New Mexico gambling even one plane to bring his Marines to their side. The best he might be able to do would be to move his troops out on their own, away from the war, but then what? How would they survive? At least here they had a steady supply of food, small but steady. Yesterday Leadville had even driven out two wooden crates containing stale coffee, fresh green onions, and a few bags of cow meat.
Leadville must realize how easily they could be bought, and Hernandez looked at Gilbride again as the two of them picked their way through the endless rock. Thank you, he thought. He knew his sergeants were working even harder than he was, not just the physical effort to scale across to the other mountains and back, but enduring the tension within their own squads. A war of nerves. There was no easy way out.
In fact, Hernandez had decided not to get out. The basic facts of the situation remained. Leadville was better prepared than anyone else to develop the nanotech, so he would stay and defend the city. The problem was in the leadership’s decision to horde the vaccine for themselves. The only path to peace would be to share it, not only on this continent but overseas.
Hernandez was very late in coming to this realization. He wasn’t proud of himself. It had been too easy to go along with them when he was on the inside. He had been a part of the problem. That was the truth…So he would stay, but in his mind he had already rebelled.
Given enough time, enough work, Hernandez was sure he could convince most of the other ‚eld commanders to join him. Eventually the chance would come; the chance to make an excuse to report in person, bringing Gilbride and a handpicked squad alongside him; the chance to imprison or kill most of the top leadership and then cement his takeover with the very same troops they’d positioned all around Leadville.
* * * *
But he was out of time. Hernandez woke from a light, uncomfortable doze into frigid green daylight, the morning sun ‚ltering through the command tent.
“Sir!” Lucy McKay shook his arm.
“Where is—” He heard ‚ghters. “I want missiles right into them, do it now before—”
The scream of the jets was away from his mountain, receding quickly. Hernandez staggered up and grabbed his jacket and boots in a confusion of people as Anderson and Wang rolled out of their sleeping bags.
McKay looked wild with her hood down and her color high in her cheeks. “It’s four F-35s, sir,” she said. “They’re ours. Looks like they’re going east.”
“Are there choppers out of New Mexico?”
“Command hasn’t said anything on the radio.”
He got outside with McKay still crowding his side. She was holding binoculars for him, their best, a pair of 18 × 50 image-stabilized Canons. Hernandez nodded thanks, although there was nothing to see. The jets were on the north side of the mountain. At a glance, the sky to the south was empty, too. There were less clouds than during the night. He studied the long slants of yellow sunlight.
McKay continued to ‚dget and Hernandez said, “Stay on the radio. Don’t call. Just stay on it and shout as soon as you know something.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stepped past Wang at the.50-caliber gun, past Bleeker and Anderson with a missile launcher. Bleeker looked steady but Anderson’s sun-scorched face was tight and Hernandez said, “You’re doing ‚ne, Marine.”
Every alert wore them down a little more. When the ‚ghters scrambled at night, there was the panic between getting outside and putting on enough clothes ‚rst. Four troopers had lost skin on their ‚ngers when they ran to their weapons bare-handed. Another badly bruised her knee when she fell in the dark. But they had to respond. There was no way to know if Leadville was launching an attack or defending against one, and their own lives were on the line.
Hernandez moved completely out of the trench, stepping up above the rock wall. There was shouting across the hill and he used his binoculars to sweep Bunkers 5, 4, and 2.
Lowrey stood at the edge of 2, yelling at someone inside. Then he glanced up with his own binoculars. Hernandez raised one ‚st, then showed an open hand like a traf‚c cop. Hold tight. Lowrey repeated the gesture before he turned and relayed the command to Bunkers 3 and 6, which were beyond Hernandez’s sight. It was ridiculous, but they only had one set of civilian walkie-talkies and just eight spare batteries. They needed to use hand signals or runners as much as possible.
Hernandez was pleased to see that his people continued to look ready, jumpy but ready, and he caught a few words of the hollering over in 2 now. “Up! Shut up so I can!”
They were shouting at each other to be quiet so they could listen for helicopters. Absolutely ridiculous. They needed radar, but all they had were two more binoculars, their naked eyes, and the broken land itself. The mountains channeled sound but also confused it, continuing to echo with the dull hammer of the jets. Hernandez scanned out across the upheaval of black spaces and snow and earth. The hazy sky. Nothing.
* * * *
Forty minutes later he’d given the order to stand down as well as calling in his two lookouts. He was out of position himself. He could have kept his scouts in place but it was shit work, missing hot coffee and food. That was a leader’s prerogative.
Hernandez had climbed up to the saddle of rock at the top of the mountain with his binoculars and a walkie-talkie, hoping for some clue down in the valleys around Leadville. Instead, there was movement far out to the east, a single cargo plane accompanied by a single jet.
At this distance, even the larger C-17 was little more than a dot, but Hernandez recognized the speed and shape of it. That must be one of ours, he thought, because no more ‚ghters had scrambled to meet them. Still, the appearance of the transport was unusual. Nothing ever †ew in from over the plains of the Midwest because there was nothing out there.
He thumbed his send button and said, “McKay, call in for orders. I have a C-17 and an F-35 coming out of the east. Tell them we’re weapons tight. Permission to ‚re?”
The ’talkie crackled. “Aye, sir.”
Hernandez didn’t really have any chance at the planes. He estimated their range at twenty-‚ve miles, although that might shrink to twenty if they continued in toward Leadville. Even if he’d brought a missile launcher, the surface-to-air Stingers had a max range of three miles. Still, he knew that a request to go weapons free would get a response.
It came in less than a minute. The ’talkie hissed again and McKay said, “Hold ‚re. Hold ‚re. They say it’s a Russian envoy, sir. He’s on our side. It sounds like there was some harassment from the breakaways out over the Midwest, that’s why our jets went to meet him.”
“All right. Thank you.”
So the other ‚ghters were providing a protective curtain far to the north. Hernandez felt a moment of empathy for the pilots. There was nowhere to eject if they were hit. Even when they were okay, they rode a tightrope above a world of ruins and death. For once he was glad to be on this mountain.
The two planes passed over the Continental Divide. The C-17 began to descend as its ‚ghter escort pulled ahead. Hernandez couldn’t see the marsh †ats north of Leadville, but he’d watched enough to learn that the long highway had become one of the main runways for local forces. Leadville command seemed to be bringing the C-17 there, rather than using the short strip at the county airport south of town.
Suddenly the cargo plane dipped hard and Hernandez tensed against the frozen ground. Then the plane leveled out again, as if someone grabbed the controls. It circled uncertainly, casting left and right like a bird that had just opened its eyes. It †ew like a different plane altogether. After the violence of its nosedive and the new way the aircraft handled, Hernandez did not doubt that a different pilot sat in the cockpit — and the real proof was in the change of †ight path. The C-17 was already drifting toward the city.
The ‚ghter was more than a mile in front but accelerated into a long, high loop, trying to swing back and catch the larger, slower plane. Too late.
A cold sheet of horror propelled him up from the ground and he turned to run, glancing back despite himself. His gaze fell brie†y to the miles of up-and-down terrain between himself and Leadville and then Frank Hernandez sprinted away, screaming into his walkie-talkie.
“Cover! Take cover! Everybody down right now!”
13
In downtown Leadville, Nikola Ulinov emerged from a Chevy Suburban into the sound of aircraft. He carefully ignored it. His head wanted to turn up toward the distant thrum of jet turbines, but he kept his gaze on the sidewalk as he followed Senator Kendricks and General Schraeder from the car. It wasn’t so dif‚cult. The sound was everywhere, rolling from the mountains, and he didn’t need to look. He knew what was coming.
“This way, Ambassador,” said a young man in a trim blue suit. Pale and clean-shaven, the senator’s aide had obviously never spent much time outside in this high place, and the lack of a beard was its own signal.
The men surrounding Ulinov all shared this luxury, like a uniform. It was the one thing in common between the security units that had accompanied Kendricks and Schraeder to the small plaza in front of city hall. The four civilian agents wore dark suits and carried only sidearms, whereas the two Army Rangers were in camou†age and boots and carried ri†es, but they were all smooth-faced and none of them had that painful thinness he’d seen in so many other survivors.
“Well, it looks pretty good,” Kendricks announced, surveying the bright ribbons and †ags that decorated the plaza.