by Jeff Carlson
She’d never completely escaped her fear as they worked— there were too many reminders, the clinging skin of her suit, the weight of her pack and the cramping discomfort in her shoulder—but she had used her diaper standing right there among five men and thought little of it, spellbound, possessed.
Now she prayed to God that there would be a place and time for her to lose herself again. Not for her own sake. Not ever again for her. The millions of people left in the world didn’t deserve to starve and fight through the next thousand years because of her selfishness. Shouldn’t that count for something?
Please please please. The litany was her heartbeat.
“This is Dansfield, I’m lighting up—”
She looked back. Stupid. Three of the four men behind her in the hermetic chamber had turned outward, and she saw Iantuano’s lips part in surprise at her reaction. Then her gaze shifted naturally to the fourth man, a kneeling shape, just as the welding torch in his hands spat out a holy blue-white flame. She flinched.
Please God.
Afterimages clung to her eyes. “Todd,” she said, “will you double-check the trailer? I’m going to look over what’s left in here and then we can triple-up on each other, okay?”
“Sounds good.”
“Let me help.” That was Cam, jacking his radio back in without permission. Ruth paused, afraid for him, but surely Young wouldn’t object now that Leadville knew everything.
His scarred, broad features had swollen between his nose and mouth, though the extent of it was tough to judge because the interior of his faceplate was flecked with dry blood, thickest over the bottom half. Beside Cam, low in the wheelchair, Sawyer blinked up at her with a frightened chimpanzee grimace. No doubt he’d also looked at the welding torch.
“Why don’t you give that guy a hand?” she asked, motioning outside the lab where a soldier was lashing equipment onto the trailer. “We can’t afford for anything to fall off.”
“Right.” Cam turned and trotted after Todd, leaving Sawyer in the middle of the floor.
Ruth strode alongside the counter, regarding the jumble. If there was room, if they had a fleet of trucks, they would leave nothing except the chairs and desk lamps. But other items didn’t matter, picoammeters, a signal generator—
She was standing in Corporal Ruggiero’s blood.
She clenched her fist and kept moving, although she angled back from the counter to walk on clean tile. Then her gaze lowered again with the same reflex curiosity that had nearly blinded her.
The puddle had smeared when they dragged Ruggiero from the room, a broad trail now turning black and sticky.
Captain Young was in the far corner again, where he’d gone after each interruption, standing over the prisoners with another Special Forces soldier as a third man wrapped more tape around the prisoners’ legs. They were already immobilized. Why bother?
Ruth fumbled for her radio control, careful not to drop her laptop and unwilling to set it down.
“—or own fault. Otherwise you’d be riding back with us.”
“You can’t just leave us here.” Hernandez. They must have plugged his radio in.
“I can’t bother keeping an eye on you or messing around with an extra vehicle,” Young told him. “I’m sorry. We’ll tell them where to find you.”
“What if they don’t get here in time?”
“You have almost two hours. And you can survive for almost two more after that before you really start to hurt.”
“Not if we suffocate in these suits.”
“We’ll leave you a knife,” Young said. “You should be able to get everybody up and moving in ten, fifteen minutes.”
Longer than that. But Ruth didn’t say it. The Marines would need to be very cautious to avoid cutting open their suits, and now she realized why the soldier with the tape was looping it around their shins and knees instead of reinforcing the bonds at their feet. More surface area meant more exacting surgery.
“Wait.” Hernandez spoke faster now. “You know Timberline has the best chance at putting together a bug that really works. If you take this technology to the breakaways—”
“Good-bye, Major. Good luck.”
“—you’re playing with more lives than you—”
Young knelt and yanked Hernandez’s jack himself, as the soldier with the tape leaned over. He also held a folding knife. They cut Hernandez’s wire and then did the same to the other three Marines, irreparably muting them.
It was a mercy, giving Hernandez and his squad a chance, and it was smart. Ruth approved. If Young had executed them, he couldn’t expect any better for himself if things went bad.
Leaving them here to be rescued was also, she thought, a calculated move to draw away some of Leadville’s forces.
More than fifteen minutes passed before they were driving—the EUVL components barely fit through the air lock one at a time—but Young held up until the last piece was aboard the trailer.
Their shadows were small and huddled beneath them, the noon sun suspended near its highest point.
Dansfield led off in the ’dozer, Trotter kneeling on the roof on the operator’s cage with one of their two assault rifles, and Olson stood behind him on the bulldozer’s body. The five civilians and four remaining Special Forces crammed into the jeep and among the tightly packed gear on the flatbed, Sawyer and his wheelchair wedged into the back. Iantuano sat on top of an EUVL component with the second rifle.
Newcombe had disabled the pickup with three pistol shots, both driver-side tires, the radiator. They’d also dumped most of the equipment they’d brought here, keeping the remaining air tanks and the pressure hood—and Ruth noted that among the abandoned gear were the gas cans Young had sworn he’d use to destroy the lab machinery if Leadville pressed too close.
His quiet choice made her proud and sad at the same time, a feeling that was wild and lonely and right. Even worse than the Leadville government controlling this nanotech would be no one having it at all. Young had no intention of blowing up what so many people had struggled so hard to attain.
They were slow, the jeep straining to pull its load, but even at twenty-five miles per hour they were up Folsom Boulevard and moving north on 54th before they heard the planes again.
The fighters crossed overhead, a sky quake. Pressed between D.J. and Cam at the rear of the jeep, not down in the bench seat but perched on the rim of the vehicle’s body, Ruth tried to look around but lowered her head before she lost her balance.
They bumped through the adjoining yards, briefly dodging eastward, then continued north on 55th. Half a block later they pointed west. From this point on it was a straight shot back through nineteen residential blocks until they approached the highway, and Jennings accelerated to keep up with the ’dozer.
“We’re going to make it,” Young said.
The enemy C-130 came head-on over square shapes of the city horizon, low and lazy, and Ruth twisted her head around again to look for the sun, completely disoriented.
Were they driving the wrong way? “Where are—”
Other voices made a confusion of the radio: “Jesus they’re the airport’s south of right at us!”
They couldn’t be lost. There was only one path back through the ruins, so the big cargo plane must be flying out of the west rather than eastward from the mountains. Soon it would pass over the freeway directly toward them.
Objects tumbled down behind the aircraft. Canisters of the snowflake nano-weapon.
Ruth tried to scream and couldn’t, lungs caught, already dead— No. The snowflake would be useless against people in containment suits. The tumbling objects were men, thick with gear, and long appendages whipped upward from each human figure and rippled and spread. Parachutes.
Already there were half a dozen rectangular gliders seesawing down in the C-130’s wake.
29
A wet shock of blood hit Cam’s faceplate as Jennings lurched back from the steering wheel. The snap of the man�
��s head was abrupt and vicious, and Cam jerked and shouted as gunfire rolled over the street.
Dead, helmet torn, Jennings bounced forward again from his seat and fell across the wheel. The jeep swerved left at thirty-five miles per hour, slowing as his boot slid off the gas but rammed on by the trailer’s weight and inertia.
The shift of momentum was a steepening terror in Cam as his thinking exploded.
Past the Thirty-eighth block, Olson had spotted an olive drab glider hung up in a cluster of trees, its harness open, the paratrooper gone—and Captain Young had shrugged and said to keep going. They knew they were surrounded. They knew they were outnumbered. Counts varied but they agreed that more than forty chutes had swept down from the C-130, gathered mostly in a large batch ahead of them and a smaller group behind.
Young hoped to bluff their way through, but the sniper’s kill shot had been timed with at least one other marksman.
Eyes wide, mind wide, Cam saw Trotter spin off the roof of the bulldozer’s cage ten yards ahead. Farther on, muzzle flashes erupted along the squat brick wall of an apartment complex and from behind the corners of a condominium building, more than a dozen erratic bursts on and off like a firing of synapses.
The ’dozer took the brunt of it. Sparks and yellow paint dust jumped up from the hard iron and Sergeant Olson fell with Trotter. In the driver’s seat Dansfield bucked and shook, shredded as a few rounds chanced between the slats of armor and then pinwheeled back and forth.
Riding shotgun in the jeep, Young shouldered against Jennings’s body to straighten the wheel. Too late. He kept the jeep and trailer from jackknifing—and maybe from turning over as the trailer’s mass continued forward—but bad luck had a red Toyota minivan angled across their path.
They struck the van doing twenty-five or more, their right fender punching the corner of its rear end. Both vehicles rocked and the smaller, heavier jeep butted against the minivan’s side.
No one was wearing safety belts. Jennings and Young couldn’t fit into theirs, unable to sit properly because of their air tanks, and in back Cam and the three scientists were perched together above the bench seat.
Impact threw Cam sideways into Young’s back. Todd, opposite him, began to topple out of the jeep but was hit by the side of the van at the same time that Ruth and D.J. were carried forward over Cam in a tangle of bodies. Someone’s arm mashed his headset against his skull.
Pinned beneath them, against the dashboard, Young squirmed out through the open side of the jeep.
On the radio a man wept—who else had been shot?—and they were all breathing like dogs. Cam dragged himself into the space that Young had cleared, then dropped onto the asphalt. Blunt jigsaw chunks of safety glass rolled like pebbles under his forearms and belly.
The minivan and the jeep had come to rest in a cockeyed T-shape, the trailer bent around to make something like a triangle, and to Cam’s widened perceptions the little import van felt like a huge bulk between himself and the paratroopers.
Then a knot of rifle rounds tore through the dented panel above his head and slammed into the jeep. Tink tak tak.
“Cover cover gimme anything!” That was Young. His faceplate had a stress fracture across his brow and he looked past Cam at the trailer with one eye shut, the skin on that cheekbone and temple rubbed raw. “Newcombe!”
Two minutes ago Cam had considered asking for a pistol. They had extra guns stripped from the Marines, but Young had been off the general frequency, communicating with their pilots and maybe Leadville as well, and the spare gun belts were on the trailer with Newcombe and Iantuano—
Jennings. There was a gun on Jennings’s corpse.
Even as Cam thought it, crabbing onto his knees, Young and someone on the trailer managed a small amount of return fire—the sporadic, heavy bark of Glock 9mm pistols. Young didn’t even bother to aim, his arm thrust under the minivan.
The paratroopers responded and Cam stayed flat as a shower of glass clattered over him, mixed with slower-falling shreds of paint, plastic, and upholstery. But the rifle fire didn’t sound as concentrated as before. Some of the troopers were advancing, he realized, and must have ducked at the pistol shots.
Young was slowing them down but probably not by much.
Cam rose from the asphalt against all instinct, overcoming his own fear-stiffened muscles. Any safety the ground provided was a lie. If Leadville had been negotiating with Young since their first exchange, it was only a ploy. This ambush was Leadville’s true response, and showed a willingness to pick up whatever pieces were left rather than risk recapturing nothing at all—and if Cam and the others were overrun here in the street, they could all expect a bullet in the head.
So close, the troopers would kill them out of self-defense, to prevent them from detonating the explosives Young had threatened to use.
Cam hunched into the side of the jeep and clawed at Jennings. He screamed when a bullet sang off of the jeep beside him, near enough that the vibration went into his chest. Then he ducked back to the ground, dragging Jennings by the neck.
He glimpsed Todd above him, still lying in the rear of the jeep and using his body to shield Ruth and D.J. Todd’s voice was a mantra, a mumble, his headset either damaged or knocked off somewhere inside his suit: “Down, down, stay down!”
Twice now Cam had seen him protecting others.
Beyond the jeep, Newcombe stood on the trailer where he’d been riding in a narrow slot among the computers, pistol out, and the invaluable hardware around him might have been the best protection. Maybe no one was shooting at Newcombe. Sawyer had likely also come through the crash okay, his chair wedged into the rear and facing backward, but Iantuano was missing from his perch. Either the snipers had nailed him in that opening volley or he’d been thrown onto the street.
“We gotta move! Move now, move south, let’s get behind that white building!” Young rallied them with well-trained authority, but spoke as if organizing people scattered over a vast distance instead of a few yards. “Where are the scientists? Newcombe, can you reach—” He stopped.
Cam held a Glock 9mm in one hand, even as he tugged the gun belt away from Jennings.
Young stared at him. Young was reloading, vulnerable.
“Captain? Hey, shit.” Newcombe obviously thought Young was wounded or dead, and assumed command after no more than an instant’s panic. “Shit, uh, we’re running for the white house!”
“They’re still in the jeep,” Cam said, answering Young, and Young was talking again even before Cam had finished.
“Make sure they have the nanotech,” Young told him. “Newcombe, can you reach the extra belts? Grab ’em all. We’re gonna have to hike it out.”
Abandoning the lab equipment was a good sacrifice, and should hold many of the paratroopers here. But how close were they to the freeway? Had they even reached Thirty-fifth Street?
“Science team, listen up!” Young was fiercely methodical. “I want you over the driver side of the jeep, that’s away from me. We’re gonna run south to that white building on the closest side of the street and I need you to bring all of your gear, the laptop, the samples, all of it!”
Cam tried to think through the math. Christ. They were at least seven blocks from the plane, two down and five over.
Young continued. “Iantuano, you still with me?”
“ ’Round back of the trailer, yeah. I think I busted my arm.”
“I need you to carry Sawyer. Can you slide your sixteen down to Newcombe? We go on my mark.”
Seven blocks unless they were cut off.
Cam belly-crawled after Young between the trailer and jeep as Todd scrambled down onto the asphalt, then Ruth. Looking from side to side for D.J., Cam saw Iantuano punch Sawyer in the gut three times to stop him from fighting, swinging awkwardly with his left because his other arm was broken.
“Where’s the other one, the other scientist?” Young shouted at Ruth even as D.J. yelled, “Give up! We have to give up!”
He was still in the jeep. Cam might have left him. There was no time. But Ruth and Young both argued with D.J. even though they couldn’t see him, crouching together alongside the vehicle. “Goddammit it’s not that far,” Young said, and Ruth yelled, “We can make it!”
“It doesn’t matter if we don’t have the laser—”
“The software is the most important thing!” Ruth shouted. “The software and the samples! We can make it!”
Iantuano inched toward them, parallel to the trailer, with Sawyer over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Meanwhile the rifle fire came in short, controlled bursts, picking over the minivan. Only Newcombe was shooting back and Cam could sense the Leadville troops shifting closer—
Young turned and fired point-blank into the jeep, five quick rounds. D.J. cried, “No, no, wait!” But every shot went into the front wheel well, destroying the tire and striking the engine. Crippling the jeep would make it harder for their enemy to move the lab gear, which might keep at least some of the paratroopers from chasing them. These shots also sounded like return fire from their position, and solved the problem of
D.J. as effectively as Iantuano had controlled Sawyer. “No, wait,” D.J. pleaded. “I’m stuck! I can’t!”
“Help me grab him.” Young glanced into Cam’s eyes before he rose, and Cam couldn’t leave him up there alone.
Standing over the jeep felt like leaning into the path of a train, expecting a bullet, and Cam tore a ligament in his shoulder as they hauled D.J. out of the backseat and put him on the street with rough adrenaline strength.
“Green green, we are inbound on foot!” Young hollered, and clearly their pilots had been waiting, listening.
“I am holding position. I am holding position.” The Air Force man spoke with cool precision, then added, “Get your ass back. We’re not going anywhere without you.”
They were lucky— It was a crazy thought— Cam realized they were lucky their radio channels hadn’t been jammed. Their headsets were basically just walkie-talkies, and Colorado was a long goddamned ways off to affect local communications, but the paratroopers surely had the same equipment as they did.