by Jeff Carlson
The lead agent said, “Yes, sir.” But he was glancing over the rooftops, where soldiers stood in pairs in clear view. There would be snipers tucked into key spots as well.
So far as Ulinov knew, today was only the second time since the plague year that the top levels of the U.S. government would appear in public together. The layers of protection around this spot were intense. There hadn’t been any need to come in two Suburbans. They could have walked. The city had been shut down and the streets were empty, except for the armor and machine guns at key intersections.
“Nice day for it, too,” Kendricks said, directing a grim smile at Ulinov.
Ulinov only nodded. Kendricks seemed exceptionally pleased and was early for his little ceremony. He wanted to make this place his own before the Russian envoys were driven in from the air‚eld. The scene was well-crafted. Kendricks had transformed himself to match. He’d put away his cowboy out‚t and donned a business suit instead, keeping his string tie but giving up his white hat, exposing his rich brown hair to the sun and the cool hint of a breeze.
The squat face of the city building had been lined with red, white, and blue bunting. In the open square in front stood a podium, four cameras, two clumps of folding chairs, and the beginnings of a crowd. There were the ‚lm crews and select media. Ulinov also saw a small pack of children with three teachers who’d wisely decided to keep the kids busy by talking to an Air Force general in dress blues.
Kendricks moved away from his Suburban in a phalanx of men. Ulinov limped after the group. Kendricks didn’t look back, but Schraeder extended his hand to Ulinov’s elbow.
“We’re all the way in front,” Schraeder said gently.
Ulinov nodded again, lost in his thoughts. As if it was possible to hide from the drone of the plane.
He looked exactly like these privileged men, he knew, sharp and tidy. That made him surprisingly uncomfortable. Yesterday, Schraeder had sent over two men with scissors, soap, a razor, and new clothes, and little by little it had felt like giving himself up. He didn’t know why. He’d spent a lifetime keeping everything in its place. For a cosmonaut, neatness and details were critical, and yet Ulinov would have preferred to wear his nation’s uniform. There had been more than one in his duffel bag in the Endeavour, but it was better for the Americans to feel that they controlled him down to the smallest details.
The only thing of lasting importance was his conduct. His heart. His memory. He knew he’d done well, and that helped him control his fear. More and more, he’d taken refuge in his past, recounting the people and places of his life, his father and sister and the simple comfort of home, his girlfriends, the magni‚cent killing beauty of space. He was glad Ruth wasn’t here. He would have liked to listen to her tease him about his haircut and his suit, but the two of them had always been separated by duty and now he realized that it for the best. If she was still alive, he wished her nothing but success.
He thought of the other astronauts and the friendships they had shared in the ISS despite their differences. American. Russian. Italian. None of that had been a problem up there and it made him feel both wistful and glad.
At last, Ulinov looked up.
The noise was unending. Louder now. As the C-17 passed over the nearest peaks, the basins around Leadville had caught and echoed the sound. A moment ago there had been another subtle change as the hum of the engines deepened.
Kendricks missed it, making eye contact with a Special Forces colonel who stood near the last row of folding chairs. “Hello, Damon,” Kendricks said easily, offering his small hand. “Early bird gets the worm, eh?”
“You and me both, Senator,” the colonel said.
But at Ulinov’s side, the lead agent put his ‚ngers to his ear-mike and muttered, “Ah shit.” Ulinov also saw several of the children lift their heads, restless in their perfect clothes. An eight-year-old boy poked an elbow into his friend’s side and was reprimanded. “Stop it,” their teacher said.
At the same time, the silhouettes of the men on the rooftops shifted and turned.
“Sir. Excuse me.” The lead agent stopped Kendricks just as he began to stride through the corridor between the folding chairs. “Senator? We’re on alert.”
Schraeder reacted ‚rst. “Where?”
“The air‚eld. Their plane. It’s not landing.” The agent kept his left hand cupped over the side of his head, listening simultaneously as he talked.
The schoolboys traded jabs again. But their teacher was staring in the other direction.
“It’s coming toward us,” the agent said.
Kendricks’s face shrunk into something made of stone. He shot a long, searching glance at Ulinov and said, “Are you trying to strong-arm us? Change the deal?”
Ulinov didn’t answer.
Schraeder clutched his sleeve and yelled, “Damn it! Tell us what’s going on!”
Kendricks seemed not to see any threat or triumph in Ulinov, however. Kendricks took aside the agent with radio connection and Schraeder ducked his head into the conversation, too, pausing only to stab his ‚nger at Ulinov. “Search him,” Schraeder said.
One of the Army Rangers touched his pistol against Ulinov’s forehead. “Don’t even breathe,” the Ranger said as his partner shuf†ed his hands through Ulinov’s clothes, looking for weapons or electronics. All gone. He’d destroyed his PDA and cell phone two nights ago and ditched the stolen 9mm Glock through a toilet seat into the septic tank beneath.
“Back in the car,” Kendricks snapped.
The bass grumble of the plane rippled over the city, vibrating ahead of the slow-moving aircraft itself. Everyone looked up. Mixed with the sound was the higher, lifting whine of a jet ‚ghter, but neither plane was yet in sight from where Ulinov stood inside the plaza. The row of †ags undulated once in the breeze. Then a woman shrieked and Ulinov staggered as the Army Rangers hustled him after Kendricks and Schraeder, running back to the street. “Move! Move!”
The civilian agents also had their guns drawn, as if this could make any difference. It did. One of them reached the cars ‚rst and waded into the tightly packed vehicles, brandishing his pistol at a GMC Yukon that had just arrived.
“Move over!” the agent shouted.
“I’m with Congressman O’Neil,” the driver said, but the agent yelled, “We’re taking the car!”
Beside them, other units of men slammed into the parked vehicles, pushing and hollering. Within this small chaos, Ulinov’s calm ‚nally broke. Please, he thought. Oh please.
But it wouldn’t stop. Their panic increased his own adrenaline. He saw two soldiers hauling a shoulder-mounted missile launcher out into the open. Some of the children screamed, their voices lost in the noise. Then the human sounds were punctuated by the explosive bark of recoilless ri†es opening ‚re from the rooftops all around the plaza. Hidden weapons teams were trying to take down the plane — and for one instant, Ulinov hoped they would succeed.
* * * *
Kendricks had been rough with Ulinov, outraged at his spying and deceit. Through him, Kendricks had pushed the Russian leadership hard, threatening to abandon them altogether. First he let them beg. Then he relented and agreed to honor their arrangement for U.S. planes to airlift the Russians into the Indian Himalayas. Anything beyond that must bear a steep cost. Limited munitions. Limited food. Leadville would not include any livestock and there would never be any weaponized nanotech.
That’s it, Kendricks said, and the Russians had played into his power game. The Russians admitted they were desperate. They clung only to one additional point. Along with providing aircraft and pilots to help ferry their populace to India, the Russians also wanted the U.S. to accept ‚fteen hundred women and children as well as a few top diplomats directly inside Leadville, both to establish a small secondary colony and to assure the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
Too many, Kendricks said. We’ll take a hundred.
A thousand, the Russians bartered back. Then they sweetened the deal
. Leadville would also be entrusted with the treasury and museum pieces of the motherland, and Ulinov wasn’t surprised that this meant a lot to the Americans, capitalists to the end, no matter that the crowns and paintings of pre-plague history could feed and protect no one. To some minds, those artifacts would now be even more priceless.
The haggling went down to ‚fty people to make room for the money—‚fty lives and tons of cold metal and jewels. They were more hostages than rescuees, of course. It went unspoken, but Leadville would have total control of their fates, and these fifty people were the wives and children of the premier, the prime minister, the generals, a famous composer. The exchange was supposed to be a new beginning, a mutual gesture of trust. The Russians surrendered their families and their wealth, and in turn the Americans promised to allow ‚ve hundred more refugees to ‚nd safety in Leadville when the American planes ‚nally returned from completing the Russian evacuation to India.
That’s a generous offer, Kendricks said, but one plane cleared in through Leadville’s defenses was all the Russians wanted. Just one.
* * * *
It rumbled over the city, a snub black shape glinting in the sun. Ulinov closed his eyes against the noise and jerking of the security men, trying to quiet himself. This wasn’t how he wanted to die, in a hubbub of ri†e ‚re with Kendricks shouting at him.
“We’ll leave every last one of your people to die, Ulinov!” Kendricks screamed as his men tore open the doors of the GMC. “Don’t you get it!? You screwed your only chance!”
“Sir!” the lead agent interrupted, pulling Kendricks around the tall silver hood of the truck.
The bitter irony was that Ulinov thought perhaps he’d brought this on himself by relaying such huge numbers through his radio link, counting jets, reporting the buildup of armored reserves. His people must have decided there was only one way they could ever stand up to Leadville’s strength.
* * * *
The Americans would have scanned the treasure and reported it clean before loading it on the other side of the world. Somehow that hadn’t been enough. Either one crate or more had been substituted before the plane took off, or one crate or more had been lined with dense, cheap silver that merely looked like Czarist-era relics in X-ray and infrared. The U.S. forces hadn’t wanted to stay on the ground any longer than necessary, within reach of Muslim rockets and infantry charges, and of course they had the money on the plane. They also had the families, with every identity con‚rmed by state records and ‚ngerprinting.
Ulinov did not doubt that these promising young sons and daughters were exactly who they were purported to be. It was only ‚fty lives — grandmothers, cousins, and wives. And yet he’d noticed one mistake among the dozens of the ‚les sent back and forth. There had been one name that was never mentioned again after appearing on a single manifest, no doubt entered by a clerk who didn’t realize what was being con‚rmed.
Kuzka’s mother.
The name itself was not uncommon, and the early manifests were full of such listings, stressing the family ties of the proposed rescuees instead of their actual names. Minister Starkova’s aunt and son. Director Molchaoff’s brother. And yet put together, the words Kuzka’s mother were also part of a Russian idiom that meant “to punish.” More importantly, during the height of the Cold War, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Soviet Premier Khrushchev had used the phrase as he warned the planet of an unprecedented, massive nuclear test to demonstrate the might of the USSR.
The bomb had been more of a stunt than a viable weapon, so grossly oversized that it could only be carried by a specially retro‚tted tactical bomber. October 30, 1961. They’d detonated a ‚fty-megaton hydrogen bomb on an ice-capped strip of land above the Arctic Circle. By comparison, modern warheads ranged in yield from one megaton submarine-launched ‚rst strike missiles to ten megaton ICBMs.
Ulinov was both a patriot and a student of his country’s rise to prominence. He’d caught the entry on the manifest that American analysts apparently had not, because he was certain of a double cross. Perhaps the Americans were too focused on their own rebels. Besides, the generations-old test was mostly remembered by its code name, “Ivan,” or the nickname “Tsara Bomba,” the Emperor’s Bomb.
He could not gloat. Instead, he felt pity. Leadville had transformed some of the nearby old mines into command bunkers, and Ulinov believed there was also new digging and underground construction here in town…but it would make no difference.
The 1961 ‚reball had been seen farther than six hundred miles away, lifting nearly thirty-three thousand feet from sea level. The seismic shock was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth. To limit fallout, because most of the drift was across Russian Siberia, the bomb had used lead tampers instead of the more typical uranium-238. Ulinov assumed this device would be similarly modi‚ed. Land had become far too precious to contaminate hundreds of surrounding miles.
This was the ‚nal gambit. The Russians had been bled down to cold, savage veterans poised too long on the brink of annihilation, a stateless population of warriors with one chance at eradicating the only superpower left in the world. The plane must be carrying the largest warhead they’d been able to pry out of their abandoned stockpiles — or more likely several warheads — because a missile launch would have been detected and answered in kind. Now it was too late.
* * * *
Ulinov fought them when the security unit tried to jam him into the truck after Kendricks. He wanted to feel the sky and the white mountains around him, no matter how foreign this place might be. He looked for the sun again — not the plane, but the warm, pleasant sun — as engines and shouts rose all around him. Radio static. The guns. It was the death-cry of a city.
For days, Ulinov had wrestled with his certainty and his fear, but he never tried to run. If he had, he would’ve alerted the Americans. But he hoped his people would understand. He knew what was coming.
He knew, and he stayed.
14
In California, Ruth †inched from the light in the east, an incandescent ripple like small suns popping suddenly in the morning haze. Three? Four?
At least four, she thought, trying to blink the hot white pinpoints from her eyes, but the light had been searing and unnatural. The ‚ne hair on the back of her neck stood up like rigid metal pins. For several seconds, she didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. It was as if her body was a tuning fork, quivering and hyper-alert. The rocky slope under her feet was still and cold, but the breeze out of the west made a tangle of currents as it swept through the tiny crowd surrounding her. Then the warm people reacted. The eleven of them clotted together, protecting each other, grabbing at backpacks and jacket sleeves to increase every connection.
“What the fuck was that!?” Alex screamed, and Samantha said, “Mike—”
“Aah!” Mike had twisted down onto one knee, clutching his face. By chance, he must have been gazing directly at the target when those man-made stars †ared upon the earth.
Lord God, Ruth thought. How many more had exploded in other places? There could be strikes all across the planet, obliterating the last scattered fragments of humankind. What if India or the Chinese had ‚nally convinced themselves to take that step before anyone else did?
The enormity of it walked through her like a ghost and Ruth staggered, numb and senseless, and then Cam was there like always, shouldering through the group to catch her arm.
Hiroki moaned as Cam jostled by, a low noise like a dog. The others were also beginning to wake from their shock. Alex and Sam knelt to help Mike, but Newcombe was checking his watch and Ruth didn’t understand that at all.
“Mike! Oh my God, Mike!” Samantha cried.
Cam’s expression was ‚erce. “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Look at me. Are you okay?” His brown eyes were intent and unguarded, and Ruth stared at him. The wind felt clean in her hair. She smelled pine trees and damp earth.
They had hiked
down the eastern slope beneath the Scouts’ islands to give a send-off to Brandon and Mike, who planned to explore the nearest peaks across the thin valley, then return before showing themselves to anyone. D Mac was still undecided. The method for sharing the nanotech hadn’t helped. Mike thought it was cool, but even Brandon had hesitated at drinking from the splash of blood that Cam drew from his left hand.
Ruth had considered less gruesome ways. The nanotech was smaller than a virus and could be absorbed through the slightest imperfections in the skin. They should be able to pass the vaccine merely by rubbing their spit against the boys’ arms or with something as easy as a kiss, but they had to be certain. Smeared upon the boys’ skin, the vaccine might drift away or remain inert, and a kiss might only leave the thinnest trace to be exhaled and lost. Ingesting the blood was foolproof. The nanotech was also much hardier than a virus, so it was sure to survive their stomach acids and move into the bloodstream.
Still, drinking it was ugly. The boys were scared despite Cam’s encouragement, and Ruth had been bracing herself for his good-bye. He’d kept away from her all morning. He’d also brought his backpack. Cam and Newcombe agreed it was best to keep their weapons and gear with them at all times, no matter how much they liked the Scouts. Ruth had worn her own pack because of the data index, yet she could easily see how much Cam wanted to go east with Mike and Brandon. It would be very like him to attach himself to their task, offering his experience and his strength. He’d already given Mike his binoculars, two cigarette lighters, and a small amount of sterile gauze and disinfectant, equipping the boys as best he could.
But what if there are more bombs?
Ruth’s terror was a huge weight and she re†exively pushed against Cam, trying to get past. He stiffened at her hands on his chest, misunderstanding. Then she felt the same bright fear transfer to him. There was a slanting pile of granite behind Cam and he pulled her toward it, using the rock as a blast shield.