Cannibal Reign

Fifty-Eight

Eighteen months after the impact, Ester Thorn and Harold Shipman were visiting a former shopping mall in Honolulu. It was now a facility for growing hydroponic rice. The horticulturalist giving the tour was a brunette in her late twenties named Sandra Hayes, and it was plain to both Ester and Shipman that she was very proud of the facility she had helped to create.

“And the best part,” Sandra was saying with great alacrity, “is that we’ll be able to harvest three crops a year.”

“Three?” Ester said, stopping to lean against her cane. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Sandra said, smiling brightly. “And there’s no reason we can’t duplicate this facility all through the Islands. You don’t need a giant building like this either. Any building can be converted in this same way, and not just for growing rice. The volcanic soils in these islands are excellent.”

“What about the lighting?” Ester asked. “Most of these bulbs were made specifically for growing food indoors, were they not?”

“Lighting continues to be the one problem,” Sandra said, turning glum for the first time. “We only have a limited number of them on the island, and though regular fluorescent bulbs can be used, there are still only so many of them available. So unless we can find a way to manufacture lighting domestically… we will eventually have to return to the mainland and see if there are any department stores still standing.”

Ester turned to Shipman. “We’re still up against it, Harold.”

“One step at a time, Ester,” Shipman said calmly. “We’ve made an awful lot of progress in a year and a half and these indoor facilities have already begun to contribute.”

He turned to Sandra, asking, “Have you worked with the mushroom farmers at all, Miss Hayes?”

“No,” she said. “I know Bobbi Pouha from the university in Manoa, but we haven’t really been in contact since the big push for indoor farming last year. I know that she’s very good. She knows her shrooms, that’s for sure.”

Shipman chuckled. “I understand they’ve had a couple of setbacks. I was wondering if you knew anything about that.”

“I believe those were mostly climate-related,” Sandra said. “And I think they’ve got things straightened out. Fungus can be tricky.”

“I don’t know how anyone can eat it myself,” Ester said. “But I’m glad it’s going to be available. We’re only a month ahead of our food demand.”

“I honestly think we’re going to be okay,” Sandra said. “At least for the next couple of years… and who knows? We may have sunlight by then. The sky has begun to clear some, even though most of us still need a light meter to tell.”

“Thank you very much for the tour,” Ester said. “I’m going on the closed circuit television in a couple of days, so I need to collect all the good news I can.”

“You’re very welcome,” Sandra said. “Please come back.”

During the drive back to the motel where Ester lived on the top floor, she sat staring out the window at the dead palms along the road, the brown landscape. Hawaii had been pretty lucky in terms of snow. Not a great deal of it had fallen, and what little had accumulated melted once the temperature rose into the forties during the second summer. They were heading into their second winter now and the average temperature was closer to thirty-five.

“The Navy has been after me about an expedition to the mainland,” she said with a sigh.

“You’re still opposed to the idea?” Shipman asked.

“They’re asking to disconnect one of the carriers from the power grid, the idea being that they can fit more men aboard and bring back more supplies. Which I’m not entirely opposed to, but it would mean asking Honolulu to cut back even further on its power consumption, and people have become somewhat spoiled these past six months. Not to mention that the crew would need to take a large portion of the dry goods we have in reserve.”

“But the general public isn’t aware of that reserve. The Navy’s kept it under lock and key belowdecks. What does Hadrian think about the idea?”

“He’s not opposed to it,” she said. “But he’s suggested sending a destroyer first to reconnoiter the shoreline, dispatching shore parties all up and down the California coast.”

“What about Boxer?” Shipman asked.

“Who?”

“Not who,” Shipman chuckled, “it’s a what—the USS Boxer. It’s a small aircraft carrier meant for helicopters and amphibious landing craft. And it’s not nuclear powered.”

“Which must be why the Navy hasn’t suggested it,” Ester said, perturbed. “That Longbottom is trying to hoard his fuel for the big war he thinks he’s going to have someday with God knows who. Well, that’s what we’ll do, then. We’ll send the Boxer and one destroyer escort… Oh, and the volcanologists are already after me to send an expedition to find the impact crater. Have you heard this insanity?”

Shipman smiled. “Yes.”

“Like we have the time and the resources to mount such a frivolous expedition.”

Shipman chuckled. “Is this the same Ester Thorn who got so angry with the government thirty years ago for refusing to allocate more money to keep an eye on the Great Beyond?”

“Oh, shut up, Harold. It’s not even remotely the same.”

“How can you say that? You’re a scientist.”

“The U.S. government had more than enough money to fund such a project, and it would have directly benefited mankind—which was exactly what I told them!”

“Well, I can’t argue that point,” he said, glancing at the dead countryside.

“Allowing them to mount an expedition like that now wouldn’t be any different than sending them to the gallows.”

“Well, you know geologists, Ester.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “And I understand their desires, but they’re just going to have to wait until we’ve gotten these islands more than a couple of weeks ahead of our food consumption. I wonder what old Longbottom’s going to say when I tell him to send the Boxer out. You know, Harold, I need a liaison to the Navy who I can trust, someone to tell me about things like the Boxer so I know what types of resources we truly have.”

“That person may be tough to find,” Shipman said. “Longbottom has a pretty tight rein on most everyone who knows anything about their internal affairs.”

Fifty-Nine

With the siege a distant memory, the silo population was preparing to celebrate their second Christmas belowground. Forrest and Kane had both recovered from their injuries with minimal hearing loss, and Emory’s baby was quickening nicely, still nursing regularly at her breast. Erin was unquestionably the baby’s mother, however; Emory behaved as little more than nursemaid to the child, and was already being referred to as Aunt Shannon.

The installation remained secure. The antenna array was raised every morning so the men could watch the countryside with the robotic camera, and lowered each night after dark. Thus far there had been no further signs of life aboveground. It did not snow a great deal over the summer, but no more than half the snow had melted, and flurries began to fly again with the coming of autumn.

The rat population now stood at thirty-five mating pairs and, amazingly enough, was still a secret kept among the men, Melissa and Emory the sole exceptions. The food stores were holding out better than Forrest had any right to expect, but he knew that by late March they would have to begin incorporating rat meat into their diets if they were to stretch the rest of the food through the summer—which meant it was time to start letting the rats breed at will, and they still hadn’t figured out what to use for cages. So far they had partitioned off four empty fifty-gallon fuel drums cut down the middle, but the little critters were escape artists, so Danzig and Kane had an almost full-time job just keeping them wrangled. Fortunately, the loss of the bay’s first blast door provided an excuse for keeping a man on duty within the cargo bay at all times without raising suspicion.

Ulrich tossed his pen down and sat back from the console with a brief glance at the monitors. “No matter how I crunch these numbers, Jack, we’re down to rat meat and the occasional tomato by the first of September. And we still don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do for breeding cages. The little sons of bitches can chew through damn near anything.”

“Okay. So maybe we need to forget the rats altogether,” Forrest said, thinking they might need to make a break for it before the food ran completely out. “Those figures of yours don’t include the MREs, do they?”

“You ordered me not to, so no, but each truckload only buys us an extra month at one MRE per day per person, which isn’t exactly a feast.”

“So, come the first of September we load into the trucks and roll south with the MREs.”

“South to where?”

“Maybe Altus Air Force Base.” Forrest grinned. “Marty seems to think it’s teeming with geologists.”

“That’s a pretty huge maybe, Jack, and we’ll only have a month to find a safe haven.”

The door opened and Erin came in carrying Emory Marie Ulrich, named after her birth mother Shannon Marie Emory, though everyone called her Emmy. Laddie got up from where he lay on the floor near Forrest’s chair and sat watching as she offered the infant to her husband.

“Would you hold Emmy for a little bit, honey? I need to eat.”

Ulrich sat up straight in the chair and put out his arms. “You mean with all those women out there you can’t find anybody else to hold her?”

“Everyone else is eating lunch,” she said. “It’s not going to hurt you. You are her father, right?”

Ulrich accepted the baby with a nod, and Erin smiled, kissed him on the lips and left the room. “That’s a buncha bullshit,” he grumbled. “Those broads fight over this baby.”

“She wants the kid to know you’re her father,” Forrest said, scratching the dog behind his ears. “What’s wrong with that? You’re supposed to be doing this for your wife. Remember?”

“Oh, shut up,” Ulrich said, holding the baby delicately, almost as if he were afraid of hurting her. “Pretty thing, though, ain’t she? I can’t believe Shannon still doesn’t want her.”

“She’s got reason enough,” Forrest said. “Marty told me she went through some pretty heinous shit. Maybe not as bad as Liddy and Natalie, but bad enough.”

The two women they had freed from Moriarty—Liddy and Natalie—were neighbors before the asteroid, and their families had been captured together in a basement by Moriarty’s men. Both women saw their husbands and children killed and eaten over a period of weeks, and if not for their mutual support of one another, Forrest was certain they would have killed themselves by now. Even after eight months of safety belowground, they rarely left one another’s side, as if still afraid of being violated. Michael doubted they would ever completely assimilate, both women still suffering from severe post-traumatic shock and horrible nightmares.

The baby began to fuss, so Ulrich stood from the chair and took her for a walk in the halls, talking softly to her and hoping that one of the other women would offer to take her off of his hands, but none of them did, and he began to suspect a conspiracy. There was no sense in trying to find out for sure, however. The women had grown thick as thieves over the last eighteen months.

He found Melissa in one of the blast tunnels, one of her favorite haunts, where she sat reading a book. He had not seen her working on the code for a few months now and was glad she had finally given it up.

“Good book?”

“It’s okay,” she said with a shrug, leaning against the steel bulkhead, knees drawn up. “Nothing great. I’m reading the ones that look boring first.”

“Good plan. Hey, wanna hold the baby for a while?”

She grinned and shook her head, confirming his suspicions.

“See if I do you any more favors.”

“She needs to know you’re her dad, Wayne.”

The remark struck him differently coming from Melissa, knowing that she had lost her father. “I suppose you’re probably right.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Are we going to have to eat the rats pretty soon?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I won’t have to help butcher them, will I?”

“No. The men will take care of that.”

“Thank God,” she said, going back to her book.

After he was gone, she read for a while longer then checked her watch and saw it was time for the second half of the school day to begin. She closed the book and went to the classroom to help Andie with the day’s reading lesson, like she did every other day.

Today Andie was focusing on phonics. Most of the children were already reading at a third-grade level, but she wanted to enhance their understanding of the sound values for individual letters because some of the students were having a difficult time sounding out multisyllabic words.

“So what are the vowels again?” she asked them, preparing to write them out with a blue marker on her dry-eraser board.

“A… E… I… O… and U,” the children said together as Andie wrote them out.

“And sometimes Y,” one of them added.

“That’s, right,” Andie said, “and sometimes Y.”

Melissa looked up from the lesson she was preparing to help with, her mind’s eye suddenly seeing a stream of numeric code. “Vowels,” she muttered. “What’s the most common vowel?”

She excused herself, slipped out of the room and into the adjacent common room, taking her laptop from the box beneath her bedroll and disappearing all the way to the very top level of silo number two, where she often went to be alone. She sat down in her private nook between two stacks of cardboard boxes and opened the file containing the cipher work she had done on the code months before.

The first thing she did was bring up the same stream of code she had been working on since the beginning:

Next, she brought up one of the very first ciphers she had created on her own, the same cipher now flashing in her brain for reasons she did not yet understand:

A   B   C   D

E F  G H  I J  K L

M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Then she sat staring at the code and instinctively broke it up into units of three for perhaps the two hundredth time:

She scanned the string of numbers just as she had so often before, allowing her brain to process them with something specific to focus on this time, her subconscious thought no longer hindered by Ulrich’s discouraging remarks about the infinite number of possible algorithms.

“The most common vowel is E,” she muttered, pulling on her lower lip. “So is it zero-two-four? It does appear twice.”

But what about 824? she wondered. That appeared twice as well, and both sets appeared in tandem, so they might just as easily be consonants. L’s perhaps.

She set the computer aside, ran back down the stairs to the tunnel, then down the tunnel to the main corridor and into the first common room, to retrieve a sheaf of worn papers from inside the computer box.

“What are you up to?” Taylor asked her with a smile.

Taylor had been talking with Jenny and Michelle when Melissa had left in a hurry before with the computer, and she could sense that Melissa was still in a hurry even though she was trying not to look it now. Her query drew the attention of some of the other adults in the room, and Melissa was suddenly acutely aware of how crowded the complex was; she normally kept everyone largely blocked from her conscious thoughts by daydreaming of things like string theory and dark matter. Even her uncle Michael was looking at her funny.

“Nothing,” she said curtly, and walked out of the room.

When she got back up to her nook she sat down and began scanning the myriad pages of code, mentally dividing the numbers into groups of three, seeking out the digit sequence of 024 and spotting it over and over again, whereas she saw the occurrence of 824 only very rarely.

“So 024 has to be the letter E. How did I not see it before?”

The question was easy enough to answer—she had been thinking too far outside the box—and only partially on account of Ulrich’s gainsaying. Sometimes straightforward solutions to complicated issues simply avoided her, something her father had enjoyed teasing her about.

Now she needed to come up with a cipher in which E was equal to 024. She decided to add a numerical value directly to each subgroup of the early cipher merely as a jumping off point.

0   1   2   3

A   B   C   D

E F  G H  I J  K L

M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Then she assigned E a value of 022 as a place to start: Group 0, second row down, second letter in the subgroup. She could just as easily have assigned it a value of 021: Group 0, second row down, first letter in the row, but she needed to start somewhere and one place was as good as another.

After deciding she was in the right neighborhood, it occurred to her for the first time to invert the subgroups within the cipher.

0   1   2   3

M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

E F  G H  I J  K L

A   B   C   D

And suddenly there it was: E = 024. Group 0, second row down, fourth letter in the subgroup.

“Okay,” she muttered, her stomach filling with an eager anxiety, “but how do I find values for all these stupid nines, eights, and sevens?”

Her mind began to clutter again, so she closed the laptop and drew a breath to clear it before opening the lid for another look. And just like that she saw the numerical values in her mind’s eye.

0   9   8   7

M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

E F  G H  I J  K L

A   B   C   D

“Yes!” she said, jumping up to do a quick dance before sitting back down to decipher the initial string of code.

 G  R  E  E  T  I  N  G  S

924-913-024-024-812-824-012-924-811-636-

                   ?

 F  R  O  M    H  A  W  A  I  I

025-913-013-011-404-925-036-712-036-824-824

         ?

“Holy shit!” she said, her face splitting into a grin. “That’s it!”

She grabbed the papers and began to decipher them as rapidly as she could. Oblivious as the hours passed, she didn’t stop to come up for air.

“Melissa!” Forrest shouted from three stories below.

She looked at her watch and was surprised to see how much time had passed. “Up here!”

“It’s time to eat!”

“Not hungry!”

“Too bad. Get down here!”

“No!”

She heard his boots trotting up the four flights of steel stairs and sat grinning until his face emerged over the deck. Laddie came trotting over and licked her face.

“I know I misunderstood you,” he said, a wry grin on his face. “Because from way down there it sounded like you told me no.”

“I can’t stop right now,” she said.

“You’re back at that goddamn code, aren’t you?”

“Can I please skip dinner just this once? Please?”

“Melissa… that code is going to drive you insane.”

“Dad, will you please trust me this one time?”

He saw a new kind of determination in her eyes now, something that said to him she finally had a legitimate reason for wanting to skip dinner. “Okay. I’ll put a plate in the oven for you. I want you to eat when you come down. Understood?”

She gave him a little salute, making him laugh as he turned and went back down the stairs.

“Laddie, you comin’?”

The dog sat beside Melissa and watched him, cocking his head to one side.

“Communist,” he said with a chuckle, and trotted down the stairs.

“Hey, know what?” she called when he stepped onto the deck below her, looking down at him through the grating.

“What?” he said, looking up.

“I’m gonna be seventeen pretty soon.”

“I know that,” he said with a smile.

“What are you getting me?”

“What do you want?”

“A car.”

He laughed and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

When Forrest got back to the cafeteria he sat down beside Veronica, across from Karen and Michael. “She says she’s busy,” he said, lifting his fork from the steel tray.

The other three exchanged looks.

“You’ve never let her get away with that excuse before,” Karen said, grinning. “What’s different about today?”

Melissa was famous for trying to skip dinner a few times a week, and Forrest would never allow it.

“I’ve got a feeling she’s close to cracking that goddamn code,” he said quietly. “But don’t say anything to Wayne. She’ll want to tell him herself.”

“For real?” Michael asked, surprised.

Forrest shrugged, saying, “She didn’t actually say it, but I could tell by the light in her eyes.”

“Well, good for her,” Veronica said. “She’s sure lost enough sleep over that damn thing.”

After the children were put to bed that night, Forrest asked the women to join him, Ulrich, and Dr. West in the cafeteria for a meeting. Emory and the rest of the men stayed behind to watch over the sleeping children in the common rooms.

Melissa was still in the silo.

Formal meetings were rare events, so there was a lot of whispering as the women speculated over what it was about. The general consensus was that Forrest was going to announce a cut in the daily food allowance, a step that had not yet been taken and that most of them realized was probably long overdue.

“So,” Forrest said with a dubious kind of smile. “I suppose you’re all wondering why the three of us have gathered you here tonight.”

There were some chuckles.

“Okay, as I’m sure you’re all aware, we’ve consumed well over half of our original food stores. And I’m afraid that in order for us to stretch what we’ve got left through to the end of the summer, we’re going to have to take certain… certain measures.”

He glanced at the other two men sitting beside him to see if either of them wanted to jump in, but Ulrich only smiled at the women, and West maintained his usual passive demeanor.

“We know you’re going to reduce our rations,” Erin said, burping the baby over her shoulder, having only moments before gotten her back from Emory. “Just tell us by how much.”

“I’m afraid the measures are going to be a bit more radical than that, actually,” he replied. “At our present rate of consumption, we’ll be out of food around mid-May—which makes nearly two years. So we’ve done an excellent job of conserving while at the same time keeping everyone well nourished. But in order for us to stretch the food through the summer, we’re going to have to cut back to below what would be considered healthy by even minimal standards, which would put us all in jeopardy if we didn’t find a way to supplement our diet.”

“You’ve got plenty of vitamins stashed away,” Andie piped up from the back row.

“That’s right,” he said with a chuckle. “And you can believe we’ll finally be breaking them out, but I’m afraid vitamins alone aren’t going to do the trick.”

The women began to murmur, their mutual concern steadily rising.

“And as we all know,” Forrest continued, “the skies have not cleared enough to—Okay, everyone, cut the chatter and give me a second to finish. We do have a plan. But it’s going to sound somewhat repugnant to you when you first hear it, so I want you to brace yourselves.”

He was trying to make the plan sound a tad worse than what he hoped it actually was, in order to keep the truth from coming as too great a shock.

“We’ve been raising a certain kind of animal in the cargo bay. And we’re pretty sure we can breed them fast enough to provide us with a viable source of nutrition through the winter. So long as we start a full-fledged breeding program right now.”

Not one of the women made a sound. None of them wanted to even speak the word rat, but there was no other animal Forrest could possibly have been talking about in this postasteroidal world.

Erin got up from her seat and took the baby with her into the common area without even meeting her husband’s eyes, furious with him for keeping such a disgusting secret from her.

“Look, these animals aren’t the demons they have been stigmatized to be,” Forrest said quietly. “In fact, they’re actually rather affectionate if they’re handled from birth, and they’re as clean as their environment will allow.”

No one was speaking up yet, so he continued.

“The babies are called pups, and a female is capable of producing twelve litters a year with an average of ten or so to a litter. A female is able to begin breeding after just three months, and at the moment we have thirty-five breeding pairs and two extra females.”

“My God, that’s fifty-two of those… things!” Lynette said, standing up, half expecting to find one of them running under foot. “You can’t honestly expect us to eat them!”

“I’m afraid that starvation is our only other option at this point,” Forrest said, making brief eye contact with Price, who stood just inside the common room doorway.

The doctor looked embarrassed, and Forrest felt sorry for him, of course. But when a man marries a woman based largely upon her looks, he takes a calculated risk, and Forrest had warned him before he’d taken that final plunge.

“No!” Lynette said. “I’ll fucking starve! I’m sorry.”

“That will of course be your decision,” Forrest replied. “But I have seen starvation up close—in time of war—and you will be very surprised at what you can eat by the time your belly begins to swell from hunger. And I would like to remind everyone that these animals were eaten as part of the regular diet in many Asian cultures and treated with great respect, particularly in India, where they were actually worshipped, rather than eaten.”

“Next you’re going to tell us they taste like chicken!” Lynette lashed out, her flesh continuing to crawl.

Forrest could see her hysteria beginning to spread to some of the other women, so he signaled for Price to come into the cafeteria.

“Oh!” Lynette said, growing angrier. “So now I’m going to be treated like a fucking head case, is that it?”

“Honey, please try to calm down,” Price said. “This isn’t going to help anything, and no one is going to make you eat anything you don’t want to eat.”

“I want out!” she said, continuing her harangue. “Give me my share of the food and let me the fuck out! I’m sick of living on top of each other down here anyway! At least out there I’ll be able to fucking breathe!”

Forrest remained calm, seeing Emory and the other men gathering outside the doorway, Emory clearly ready to physically subdue Lynette if Forrest so much as crooked a finger.

“Lynette, are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked her with a stern military bearing. “Because I will load you up right now with all the food you can carry. You’ll actually be doing the rest of us a favor. Because you won’t be able to carry even a fraction of what you’ll eat should you choose to stay. I’m even willing to supply you with a weapon. But remember one thing: I will not let you back in when that food runs out.”

Lynette’s irate bluff had been called, her punk card drawn, stamped, and given back to her just that fast, and she was suddenly afraid that she might now be expected to make good on her threat. She could already see Ulrich’s cold blue eyes cutting into her, the faintest hint of a sinister smile on his face.

So she did the only thing a woman of her breeding knew how to do in such a situation; she sat back down and began to bawl, and Price went to her, pulled her to her feet and walked her down the hall.

The rest of the women sat staring at Forrest, unsure what to say or even think; the prospect of having to subsist on rat meat was a lot to digest.

“In response to Lynette’s supposition,” Forrest said with a smile, “I did have the pleasure of eating a few of these delectable animals during my time in the military, and yes, they do taste a little bit like chicken, particularly with a dash of Tabasco.”

Andie laughed, and that seemed to break the tension.

“Don’t we have to worry about them making us sick?” Karen asked.

“Like Jack said,” Dr. West joined in at last, “these animals will keep themselves as clean as their environment will permit. But they’ve got bad bladders, so they tend to pee a lot, which will make keeping their environment laboratory-clean something of a challenge. And while a ra—the animal—is capable of carrying diseases that are communicable to people, we’re hoping our animals are at minimal risk. This is because they’re all the progeny of the same original breeding pair—which were local animals living in the fields around the silo, rather than some New York City sewer drain.”

Later that night, Forrest was sitting in Launch Control with his feet up, smoking a cigarette. He and Ulrich were reminiscing about their younger days of whiskey drinking and womanizing and other forms of youthful wickedry. It was taking all of his self-discipline not to check on Melissa, who had yet to emerge from the silo, or envisioning her falling from the top deck to the bottom of the silo in a freak accident. If Laddie hadn’t been with her, he’d have long ago checked on her.

He was about to finally give in to his fears when she at last stepped into Launch Control. Laddie came trotting around the console and jumped up to put both of his feet into Forrest’s lap, whining and licking his face.

“Oh, so she’s not all she’s cracked up to be, huh?” Forrest said with a smile, rubbing and squeezing the dog’s face.

Melissa was smiling more brightly than he had ever seen her smile as he watched her put a single sheet of paper on the console in front of Ulrich.

A B C D E F

G H I J K L

M N O P Q R

S T U V W Y

“See that?” she asked.

“That’s the first cipher example I showed you,” Ulrich answered, noting her unmistakable glow. “The first one I checked the code against. The first cipher any cryptographer would check it against.”

“And they know that,” she said. “That’s why they’re using it. They’ve been hiding their cipher right in plain sight.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, noting the proud grin on Forrest’s face now. “Are you saying you’ve cracked the damn thing?”

“I’m saying more than that.” She put another piece of paper down in front of him.

0 9 8 7

M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

E F G H I J K L

A B C D

Any group of three numbers beginning with a digit lower than 7 is either a space or “gibberish” intended to throw off the cryptographer.

 G  R  E  E  T  I  N  G  S

924-913-024-024-812-824-012-924-811-636-

                   ?

 F  R  O  M    H  A  W  A  I  I

025-913-013-011-404-925-036-712-036-824-824

         ?

Ulrich studied the cipher, matching each letter for himself against the cipher. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch!” he said, seeing the other papers in her hand. “And this works throughout? You’ve deciphered every conversation I copied down?”

“Yep! And you were right—you can memorize a cipher pretty fast. By the time I got to the last few pages, I didn’t have to look at the cipher anymore.”

“Well, let’s see the other sheets,” he said enthusiastically.

“Whattaya give me?” she asked, hiding the pages behind her back.

“Jack, tell your wiseass kid to give me those papers.”

“You’re on your own,” Forrest said, rocking back in the chair with his hands behind his head. “She begged you to help her with that damn thing for months and you kept blowing her off. Now you want her to just hand it over? I think she’s entitled to something from your private stash.”

“What private stash?” Melissa asked, instantly scandalized, her eyebrows raised.

Ulrich glowered at his friend. “You got a big mouth, Forrest.”

“I want something from your private stash!” she said, dancing around the console to hide behind Forrest.

Ulrich got slowly up from his chair, eyeing them both. “You two may have the upper hand tonight,” he said, moving toward the spiral staircase, “but the tables will turn.”

He spiraled down and out of sight.

“What’s he got down there?” she asked in a whisper.

Forrest smiled and shrugged.

Down below, Ulrich worked the combination on a big red steel case with TOOLS spray-painted across the lid in black.

A few seconds later they heard the lid slam, and Ulrich slowly reemerged with a vacuum-sealed silver package in his hand. The package was about the size of a slice of French toast, and he offered it to Melissa with a veiled smile.

She reached for it, but he held it tight. “Give me the papers.”

“At the same time,” she said, offering the papers with a tight grip.

Each let go of their trade item at the same time, and Melissa backed away, reading the print on the foil package: ICE CREAM, FREEZE DRIED / U.S. GOVERNMENT / NASA CENTRAL STORES.

“No way!” she said in awe. “Jack, look!”

“See?” Forrest said, knowing exactly what goodies Ulrich had stashed away in the toolbox. “You can’t trust this guy as far as you can throw him.”

He looked up at Ulrich, who stood scanning Melissa’s work.

“What’s it say there, Wayne?”

Ulrich continued to read for a spell, then turned and looked at Melissa, saying, “Come here, kid.”

“No way.”

“Give the ice cream to Jack and come here.”

She gave the ice cream to Forrest and stepped suspiciously forward. “What?”

Ulrich hugged her tight. “Forgive me,” he said quietly, almost reverently. “I’ve failed to support you twice now, but I will not again… I promise.”

Forrest sat up and set the ice cream down on the console, having only seen Ulrich comport himself with such respect a few times in all the years he’d known him, and all three times Ulrich had been in the process of placing a folded American flag into the hands of a fallen soldier’s widow.

“What the hell does it say, Stumpy?”

“It says there’s hope,” Ulrich said, letting go of Melissa—who didn’t quite know what to think—and handing him the papers. “Excuse me. I have to go hug my wife.”

Ulrich left the room, and Melissa stood looking at Forrest. “What was that about?” she asked, totally confused.

Forrest sat skimming over the translations. “He’s probably feeling a little bit ashamed.”

“But he didn’t know the code was breakable.”

“Well, honey… the night you got sick, he very nearly convinced the others to vote against me going after your medicine. So if it hadn’t been for your uncle Kane…”

“I’d be dead?”

“Maybe. And from the looks of this here, kiddo… well, you just might have saved every damn one of us, Erin in particular. So Wayne owes you personally now. You’ve given him a reason to finally have some hope, which is something he hasn’t had since the night my buddy Jerry called about the asteroid.”

“Don’t you mean the meteor?”

He laughed, saying, “Well, don’t tell Wayne, but I actually do know it was an asteroid.”

Sixty

The next morning Forrest walked into the shower room and jerked back the curtain on Marty’s shower stall. “You ever hear of an astronomer named Ester Thorn?”

“Jesus Christ!” Marty said, covering himself. “Ever hear of privacy?”

“Well have you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Meet me in Launch Control when you’re finished jerkin’ off… and that’s too big a weapon for you, by the way.”

Forrest and Ulrich were working to connect a linear amplifier to the wireless transmitter when Marty joined them in the LC. He saw Ester’s textbook on the console and picked it up. “If this is what you want to know about, there’s not much she can do for us now.”

“That’s what you think,” Forrest said, peering over the top of the set. “Read those papers there. Melissa deciphered the code last night.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

Marty read the transcriptions and sat down, staring at them in disbelief.

“What do you think?” Forrest asked.

“It’s unbelievable. She’s a friggin president? This can’t be for real, can it?”

“What’s she like?”

“I don’t really know her all that well. I only met her once.” He went on to share with them for the first time his story of discovering the asteroid and his visit with Ester Thorn. Forrest and Ulrich stopped their work and looked at him.

“Are you fucking serious?” Ulrich asked him in disbelief. “Or are you jerkin’ us off?”

“No, honest to God.”

“You’re telling us that you’re the son of a bitch who sent her off to Hawaii and got her to go on CNN?”

“That’s me,” Marty said. “I can’t believe she’s their friggin president, though. She didn’t seem the type at all. Are these dates correct?”

“They’re correct,” Ulrich said, going back to work on the transmitter, “but they’re still transmitting three to five nights a week. They should be on the air tonight, and we’ll try to get some up-to-date information.”

“Think she’ll remember you?” Forrest wanted to know.

“That’s kind of a stupid question.”

“Okay, I guess a better question is whether you think she’d be willing to send a rescue party to pick your ginger ass up.”

“No, the question is whether they’ve got the resources,” Marty said, still befuddled. “But if they do, I’d like to think she’d feel at least something of an obligation. Hey, the crater photos! If Ester’s not interested in sending anyone for me, the Islands’ scientific community will definitely be interested in getting their hands on those pictures.”

“Maybe we could use the photos to start a bidding war between the Hawaiians and the Aussies,” Forrest joked. “First ones to rescue us get the pics.”

“I don’t care if they send a canoe full of Aborigines,” Ulrich said. “So long as the damn thing floats. I just hope that his name and those photos are enough to tempt somebody into taking the risk. That’s one hell of a voyage.”

“Are you guys sure you can even reach Hawaii with that transmitter?”

“No,” Ulrich said. “That’s why we’re working to boost its power.”

Erin was sitting with Emory at the back of the cafeteria, where Emory was finishing up with the baby’s morning feeding.

“Is Wayne warming up to her at all?” Emory asked.

“He’s doing a little better,” Erin said with a wan smile. “He’s got an awful lot on his mind.”

“Are you still pissed at him for not telling you about the, uh…”

“Rodents? Well, a wife has to pick her battles carefully down here. He says he was only trying to avoid upsetting me. He knows how horrified I am of the damn things.”

“Here he comes,” Emory said, covering her breast as Erin took the baby.

“Good morning,” Ulrich said, walking up to the table. “How’s our little girl this morning?”

Erin almost fell off the seat. Our little girl? “Um, she’s fine. She’s just finished feeding, actually.”

“Can I have her?”

“Um, well, she needs to be burped.”

“Let me give it a try,” he said, putting his arms out across the table.

“Are you sure, Wayne?”

“Would you rather I didn’t? You don’t think I can do it?”

“No, it’s not that…”

“Then let me give it a try.”

“Okay,” she said, a little unsure as she offered him the baby.

“You’ll need this,” Emory said, standing up to put a towel over his shoulder.

“I’ve had worse shit on my clothes than baby puke,” he said.

“Haven’t we all,” Emory muttered.

“Where are you going?” Erin asked as he turned to walk away with the baby resting against his shoulder.

“Outside for a walk in the snow.”

Erin sat watching as he left the cafeteria patting the baby gently on her back.

“What’s that about?” Emory wondered.

“Beats me,” Erin said, getting up to go after him.

“Where ya goin?” her friend Taylor said, coming around the counter, wiping her hands on her apron.

“To see what Wayne’s—”

“No, you’re not,” Taylor said, putting her arm around Erin’s waist and walking her back toward the table. “The quickest way to ruin it is to make him feel like you don’t trust him with the baby. Trust me. I’ve been there. You wanted him to take an interest. So now you’ll just have to—”

“But that wasn’t like him, Taylor, and you—”

“E, name one fucking thing we’ve done down here in the last year that’s been like any of us.”

“But—”

“He’s not going to hurt that baby. Now, sit down and finish your reconstituted egglike breakfast and let your husband get to know her.”

Ulrich walked down the hall and into Launch Control. “Put that cigarette out, will ya?”

Forrest glanced up and crushed out the cigarette in the cannon-shell ashtray. “Since when are you Father of the Year?”

“Since the whiz kid made me start to think we might actually live through this bullshit.” Ulrich heard the baby burp in his ear.

“That’s a dangerous way to think,” Forrest said with a smile.

“Tell me about it. It’s only been twelve hours, and the worrying’s already got my appetite fucked up.”

Forrest laughed. “You’ll get used to it, Stumpy. Hope is a love-hate relationship.”

“How many times is this kid supposed to burp?”

“Get a good one yet?”

“Pretty good.”

“Give her a bit longer, but she might be done.”

“I’d like to get me some of that milk,” Ulrich muttered, casting a careful glance over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in the doorway.

Forrest chuckled. “You’re the father, all right… already looking to bang the babysitter.”

“I would too.”

“Lyin’ ass.”

That night, Forrest and the rest of the fighting men were gathered in Launch Control waiting for the transmissions to begin. Melissa was there too, nervously biting her fingernails.

“Think you can keep up with me?” Ulrich asked her.

“No, not that fast, but I won’t be far behind.”

“Are we going to try to contact them tonight?” Marty asked.

“Depends on what they’ve got to say,” Forrest said, “but I don’t think we should waste any time.”

Forty minutes later the transmissions began.

“That’s the Hawaiian,” Ulrich said, recognizing the telegrapher’s hand and grabbing his pen.

Melissa looked on as he wrote out the string of numbers, going straight to her decoding, having long memorized the cipher and seeing the numbers themselves almost as words now.

“There he goes,” she said. “‘Greetings from Hawaii.’”

Forrest watched over her shoulder.

“Don’t,” she said, pushing his leg with her hand. “You’ll mess me up.”

He curled his upper lip, backing away with a grin at Kane, who crouched in the corner petting the dog.

The first transmission was finished in a very short period of time.

“That’s it,” Ulrich said, sitting back. “The Australian should answer within a minute or so.”

“He should already be done translating,” Melissa said, handing the message off to Forrest. “I am.”

“Well, give the guy time to digest what he’s reading.”

“He’s not digesting anything,” Melissa said. “If I can read it in my head almost as fast as you’re writing out the numbers, these two guys should know what it says without even consciously deciphering it. What he’s doing is letting someone else read it.”

Ulrich looked at her. “He is, is he?”

Forrest was sitting in a chair now, allowing Marty and the other men to read over his shoulder.

“The Navy is still operational,” Forrest said. “That’s damn good news! Maybe we won’t have to rely on those Aborigines of yours, Wayne.”

“We’ll see,” Ulrich said feeling his pulse quicken as he and Melissa began to intercept the Australian response.

“That’s curious as hell,” Marty said. “What’s a shark eating?”

“Screw the shark,” said Sullivan. “What’s the Chinese navy up to?”

“This discussion is a good sign overall,” Ulrich said. “They don’t seem nearly as concerned about their long-term survival as they were in the last conversation we recorded. I think we need to break into this conversation, Jack.”

“Jump in there,” Forrest said, indicating the prepared message on the console.

Ulrich began tapping out the encoded message.

Within seconds the Hawaiian telegrapher was rapidly tapping out a signal in blind Morse Code.

Which Ulrich translated effortlessly: duckbilledplatypus.

“Shit!” he said, throwing the pen down.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Sullivan said over his shoulder.

“It means the Hawaiian just told the Aussie to switch to another fucking code. A code that not even our little genius here has a prayer of cracking.” He put his arm around Melissa and kissed her on the side of the head. “No offense, honey.”

“But how do you know that?” Sullivan said.

“Because they’re switching to a three-layered emergency encryption. I’m guessing our signal is only strong enough to reach Hawaii, which means the Australian didn’t hear us. So right now the Aussie’s down there waiting with bated breath to find out why the Hawaiian just declared an emergency.”

“So that’s it?” Marty said. “They won’t even talk to us?”

“Give them time,” Forrest said easily. “What did you think they were going to say? ‘Hey, guys, join the party’? They need a minute to figure how they want to handle this.”

Ten minutes later the Hawaiian sent a lengthy message to the Australian, and it was nearly half an hour before the Australian got back to him.

Forrest took Ulrich’s pen and scribbled out a message: Nebraska standing by.

“Send that in Melissa’s code,” he said quietly.

Ulrich tapped it out and two minutes later they got a reply: confirmed nebraska.

“See there?” Forrest said, patting Ulrich on the shoulder. “Relax. It’s going to take a little time. That’s all.”

They listened to the telegraphers communicating slowly back and forth for nearly two hours before the Hawaiian got back to them directly:

Ulrich told them that it was and that they were requesting extraction from the American west coast.

“It’s approximately fifty miles across and nearly a mile deep,” Marty said. “Just north of the Montana border.”

Ulrich relayed the information.

“Radiation minimal,” Marty said. “Seismic activity moderate to heavy. Damage—total.”

Ulrich sent the information, and then at Forrest’s direction, added: Please tell Ester Thorn that Martin Chittenden sends his regards and looks forward to seeing her again soon. Nebraska signing off. Attempt to contact same time tomorrow.

“Wait,” Marty said. “Why are you signing off?”

“I don’t want them treating us like a bunch of goddamn stepchildren, that’s why. The more desperate we sound, the less we have to offer and the less likely they’ll be to send someone to pick us up.”

They listened to the Hawaiian and the Australian talking privately for another hour before the airwaves fell silent.

Sixty-One

Harold Shipman placed his hand on Ester’s shoulder, gently shaking her awake at 4:40 A.M. “Ester?” he said quietly.

“What?” she said, coming awake quickly. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing bad,” he said. “Are you awake?”

“Well goddamn, Harold, I’d better be. I’m talking, aren’t I?”

Shipman chuckled. “May I turn on the lamp?”

“Of course,” she said, pushing herself up against the headboard. “What is it?”

Shipman turned on the lamp and sat in the chair beside her bed. “You won’t believe it,” he said. “I’m not even sure I do, but our wireless operator has heard from a group on the mainland who has not only cracked his code, but also claims to have been to the impact crater. They say that it’s a mile deep, fifty wide, and that there is heavy seismic activity in the area.”

“What’s so hard to believe about that?” she said, dry-wiping her face with her hand.

“For one thing, it’s difficult for me to believe that anyone civilized is still functioning anywhere near the impact area.”

“Well, that was Marty Chittenden’s plan,” she said. “For someone to survive and carry on.”

“And that’s the irony of it, Ester. These folks claim that Martin Chittenden sends his regards and that he hopes to see you soon. They’re asking to be evacuated off the West Coast.”

“My God!”

“That’s what I said.”

Ester threw back the blanket, revealing her blue flannel pajamas. “When did we get this message?”

“A couple of hours ago.”

“Why I am only now hearing about it?”

“Apparently, no one was quite sure whether or not to wake you,” Shipman said. “Had I not gone down to the lobby for a stroll, they would have waited until morning.”

She took her cane from against the nightstand and crossed to the walk-in closet, switching on the light. “Can we get them back on the air?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They signed off asking that we contact them at the same time tomorrow night.”

“They did, huh?”

She reemerged from the closet a few minutes later dressed for the day in black slacks and a salmon colored button-up sweater. “Well, let’s drive up the mountain and see if we can’t get them to answer. I don’t believe for a goddamn minute they won’t be listening.”

Sixty-Two

Forty-five-year-old Captain William J. Bisping stood drinking a cup of coffee on the flight deck of the USS Boxer LHD 4, a Wasp Class amphibious assault ship capable of accommodating 1,200 crew members and 2,100 battle-ready Marines. In addition, the Boxer was capable of carrying up to forty-two helicopters and a number of amphibious landing craft. For the purposes of this cruise, however, it was carrying fewer than eight hundred crewmen, a detachment of only four hundred Marines, two F-35B Lightning VSTOL fighter jets, four attack helicopters, and five EFV, or expeditionary fighting vehicle, amphibious landing craft.

Steaming just off of Boxer’s starboard bow at one thousand yards was her escort vessel, the HMCS Algonquin DDG 283, an Iroquois Class Canadian destroyer, one of only a few foreign vessels the Hawaiian navy had permitted to join them at Pearl Harbor.

With Bisping’s month-long mission to the Americas now at an end, both ships were en route back to Pearl Harbor. The naval port of San Diego, more than twelve hours in their wake, the Boxer hangar deck was loaded stem to stern with thousands of boxes of fluorescent bulbs of all sizes, shapes, and varieties. She was also laden with tons of medical and mechanical supplies, critical to the longevity of the Hawaiian population.

Ashore, the sailors and Marines had encountered a few violent cannibal groups, but the Marines were heavily armed, and the ever-watchful attack helicopters on station in the air above prevented any surprise attacks as the sailors moved methodically from store to store up and down the coast, collecting every lightbulb they could lay their hands on and loading them onto trucks for transfer to the ship. They had taken no casualties, though it was necessary to kill a few dozen starving male civilians intent on eating them, most of whom had been too sickly and malnourished to be effective in pitched battle.

Bisping had remained aboard the Boxer, which did not actually go into port until it was time to load the cargo collected on the pier. The reports and digital photographs the division commanders brought back, however, gave Bisping a horrific impression of what had taken place in Southern California during the early months after the impact. Freeze-dried, mummified corpses littered the streets by the thousands, and nearly everything made of wood or that was otherwise flammable had been burned to ash.

Boxer communications officer, Lieutenant jg Brooks, stepped out of the conning tower and walked across the flight deck to where the captain stood watching the sea. “Message from Pearl, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brooks,” Bisping said, reading the printout. “Have Mr. O’Leary meet me in my cabin.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

First Officer Commander Duncan O’Leary rapped at the captain’s door five minutes later.

“Enter.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Have a look at this, Duncan.”

O’Leary read the printout and gave it back. “Extract who, sir?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” the captain said. “Get up to the con and inform Algonquin of the change in orders, then bring us about a hundred and eighty degrees. I’ll make an announcement to the crew shortly.”

“They won’t be happy, sir. This means we’re going to miss Christmas.”

“We’re not going to miss Christmas, Duncan. We’re going to be celebrating the birth of our Lord right here aboard Boxer.”

“Yes, sir,” O’Leary said with a smile. “I’ll be sure to point that out to them.”

“Please do.”

When O’Leary was gone, Bisping sat down on his bunk and took a Bible from beneath his pillow. It contained the only photos he had of his wife and three children, the only photos he would ever have. He touched his wife’s face and sat looking at her.

The temptation to jump ship and head off across the country on his own to look for them had been difficult enough to suppress the first time. Now, with the change of orders, he would be forced to endure the temptation for another indefinite period. He would, of course, never actually abandon his ship or his crew, but it was an agonizing temptation nonetheless. He told himself that Atlanta was too far to travel anyhow; he told himself that his family was long dead; and most important, he told himself it was better not to know exactly what had happened to them.

Chief Petty Officer Gordon, the senior aircraft mechanic, reported as instructed, informing Bisping that the particulate matter in the air was thin enough that it didn’t seem to have affected the turbines of the helicopters.

“Good,” Bisping said. “The precipitation must have brought a lot of it down. We’re heading back to Cali, Chief. So make sure that all of our aircraft can be ready on a moment’s notice.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Bisping announced the change of orders to his crew over the MC then laid down for a short nap. He had not been napping more than twenty minutes when the ship’s claxons began to sound.

“Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.”

Bisping took the phone from the wall, getting O’Leary immediately. “What is it?”

“A pair of Lanzhou Class destroyers, Captain, steaming right at us out of the north at twenty-five knots, distance thirty-two hundred meters beyond visual range. There wasn’t anything on the scope until just now, sir. They’re coming out of a squall.”

“Turn into them!” Bisping ordered. “Scramble the F-35s and advise Algonquin that they are to take whatever action necessary to sink both vessels. I’m on my way up.”

Bisping couldn’t imagine what a pair of Chinese destroyers was doing in American waters, but twenty-five knots was very near their top speed, and both vessels carried the Hai Ying antiship missile, lethal within a range of well over a hundred miles. Boxer and Algonquin would be engaging them at less than twenty.

By the time Bisping reached the bridge, the Algonquin had already been struck once and there was a fire on his own ship’s flight deck, where a firefighting team was already in action.

“What the hell happened?”

“ The fuckers launched a full spread the second you hung up the phone, sir.”

O’Leary was watching the northern horizon through a pair of large binoculars. “Our phalanxes knocked two missiles down but we each took a hit. Algonquin took one to her bow cannon and we lost a chopper on the deck.” A phalanx was a radar-equipped weapon system based on the M-61 Vulcan Gatling gun, capable of firing its 20mm cannon at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute, roughly seventy-five rounds per second. They were the ship’s last line of defense, and the Boxer had four of them, two mounted on the stern, one to starboard, and one to port. The Algonquin carried one on the foredeck.

“How many missiles did Algonquin get off?”

“Two, sir. I don’t see any smoke on the horizon yet but there are no more missiles inbound at this time.”

The flight officer was requesting permission to launch both of the F-35 Lightning fighters, and permission was given. As vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft, the F-35s could take off regardless of the burning helicopter on deck.

“I don’t want any more goddamn missiles hitting my ship. Is that clear, Mr. Ryder?”

“Aye, sir!” answered the weapons officer, knowing he would be getting his ass chewed later on.

“Mr. Brooks, what’s happening aboard Algonquin? Did their missiles hit or not?”

Brooks was on the phone to their escort within seconds.

“Algonquin believes they scored a hit on each vessel, sir, and they’re about to launch another pair. There was a problem with their weapon system, but they’ve got it back up.”

A second pair of SM-2 antiship missiles were fired from the Algonquin’s deck and went streaking toward the horizon just fifty feet off the surface.

“Four more Chinese missiles inbound!” Ryder announced.

This time four Sea Sparrow antiaircraft missiles were launched from the Boxer to intercept them. Seconds later Bisping saw three explosions just off the water some 1,600 meters out.

“One got through,” Ryder announced. “Port and starboard phalanxes have a lock!”

Each phalanx fired a single two-second burst and the missile was destroyed a thousand yards out.

By then both fighter jets were closing on the Chinese destroyers, reporting that both vessels were hit and smoking. It was unclear whether they were still capable of launching missiles, but the ships were still steaming south at better than twenty knots.

Bisping took the mike from the comm officer. “Ghost Rider, this is the captain. Your orders are to sink them. Is that clear?”

“That’s affirmative, Boxer. We are beginning our attack run now…”

Both F-35s carried a pair of joint-strike missiles designed for holing enemy ships at or near the waterline. One fighter broke to the east, the other west, as they dropped to a mere two hundred feet off the water, cutting sharply back toward the Chinese destroyers to attack them full abeam. At one mile, both launched their missiles, then broke hard to the right and climbed, hitting full afterburners and firing countermeasure flares in case the Chinese tried to shoot them down. But the Chinese antiaircraft systems had been knocked out as a result of previous missile strikes.

All four antiship missiles struck home, hitting the vessels at the waterline, and soon both ships began to list, quickly going dead in the water. The F-35s made a number of strafing runs with their 25mm cannons, then returned to the Boxer. One sailor aboard the Algonquin had been lost to the missile strike, and the Boxer had lost two helicopter pilots.

“Mr. Brooks!” Bisping said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get a message off to Pearl. Message is to read: ‘Attacked by two Chinese Lanzhou destroyers six miles out of San Diego. Sank same.’”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Let me know if they change our orders. I’m going down to the flight deck to see about our men.”

Sixty-Three

The women were gathered once again in the cafeteria, and Forrest stood before them with his usual smile. “Ladies,” he said happily. “How are we this evening?”

A quick glance told him that Lynette was not in attendance; she had been avoiding him like the plague since their last exchange.

“Fine,” many of them answered, having no idea why the hell they were being called together again so soon, and most of them dreading it.

“Do we have to eat scorpions this time?” Erin asked with a dry smile.

“Only you, E. The rest of us get caviar.”

There was some laughter and then everyone quieted down.

“As of last night, we have a brand new plan,” Forrest announced. “And you will all be happy to know that it does not involve any scorpions, mice, or any other kinds of creepy crawlies. What it does involve, though, is a great deal of risk. As you all know, Melissa has been working very hard to decipher the encrypted transmissions we have been picking up for a long time now. And I am happy and very proud to report that her diligence has finally paid off.”

This sent a tremor of anxiety through the group, everyone suddenly aware of what such a development could mean.

“As a result of this new knowledge,” he went on, “we are now in contact with the Hawaiian Islands, where they seem to be making a hell of a lot of progress toward building a future.”

A wave of enthusiasm swept over them, hesitant smiles on their faces.

“In another odd twist of fate,” he continued, “Marty happens to be a personal acquaintance of Hawaii’s new leader. And, as luck would have it, this leader of theirs seems to value Marty’s life enough that she has agreed to send a ship to rescue us.”

The women let out a collective cheer and there was general pandemonium.

“Hey! Ho!” he said, after a sharp whistle. “Allow me to finish before you get too carried away.”

The women settled quickly, smiles still plastered to their faces.

“They’re sending a ship,” he said, “not a convoy of trucks, which means it’s up to us to get ourselves to the California coast by the first of the year. This gives us just over two weeks. And we have no idea what kind of obstacles lie between here and there. The trucks we have will drive through some pretty deep snow, but there’s no telling how much snow has fallen in the mountain passes. It could be ten feet deep for all we know. We’ve got two months worth of MREs to take with us, but they won’t do us much good if we get snowbound and miss our window for extraction.

“So here’s the deal. The only personal items you may bring with you are what you can put in the pockets of your coats. Everything else stays, no exceptions. With all the food and fuel and ammo we’ll be hauling, there won’t be room for anything else. As it is, we are going to be sitting quite literally on top of one another in the vehicles.”

“When are we leaving?” Andie asked.

“The men are prepping and loading the vehicles as we speak.”

“Jesus, that fast?” said Maria two.

Everyone began talking at once.

“Shut up!” Joann shouted, throwing the room back into a startled silence.

Forrest chuckled, thanking her. “Okay. There’s no need to go scrambling around the complex like cats on fire. No one’s going to be left behind, so everybody stay calm, take your time and be careful. We’ve come too far for somebody to get hurt now. Make sure the children are bundled up in their winter clothes because we’re only taking one blanket per person. There won’t be room for many sleeping bags.”

The group broke up, and Melissa caught Forrest in the corridor. “What about my computer?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve always been a little bit superstitious,” he said with a smile. “Suppose we left it here as a sacrifice to the gods of war? It might help guarantee us a victory.”

“I love my computer.”

“I know you do, sweetheart, but you’re going to have your hands full helping with the children and helping me to look after Laddie. And I think maybe it’s served its purpose.”

Sixty-Four

Traveling west in a pair of Army M35, six-by-six trucks, it took the group almost forty-eight hours to travel 180 miles through two and half and sometimes as much as three feet of snow to the city of Denver. Even with snow chains on all of the tires, it was slow going, with one truck occasionally bogging down and being pulled free by the other. Kane and Forrest drove the lead truck; Sullivan, Emory, and Marty were in the second; and Ulrich and Danzig followed in their tracks due to the Humvee’s lower ground clearance.

“We’ve got what, about three hours before dark?” Forrest said, standing on the hood of his truck watching the ruined city through a pair of binoculars. “Maybe we should wait until then before we try to get through. Our night vision should give us an advantage over anyone we happen to come up against.”

“Why not wait until morning?” Ulrich suggested. “This snow’s getting deeper, and Denver may be the best chance we get to switch the trucks out for some snowcats.”

“Good point,” Forrest said. “Switching vehicles in the dark would be a pain in the ass. But we’ve still got a thousand miles to go, and I hate to waste even an hour sitting still.”

“I hear you.”

“Let’s get in there before dark and try to find the address for a local snowcat dealer. Any objections?”

“None.”

They stopped at the first gas station they came to and found a phone book behind the counter. The station looked like it hadn’t been open in fifty years, its windows shattered, trash and filth and a few hundred dollars of now useless currency swirling around in the wind. There was not a single morsel of anything edible to be found. Not so much as a stick of gum or a bottle of water.

Ulrich found an address then snatched a map from the rack near the busted register and looked up the street, tracing his finger from where they were at the corner of Tucker and Cisco to Chester Avenue on the other side of town. “Looks like the dealership’s about eight miles up the road.”

He dropped the phone book on the floor and went out through the broken storefront window.

It was getting dark by the time they made it to Vann’s RV dealership, where they found a pair of used red Bombardier GT300 twelve-passenger snowcats in the back lot alongside a new orange fifteen-passenger Tucker 1600. The vehicles were behind the building and out of sight of the road, and thus had not been tampered with.

Forrest told Sullivan, Emory, and Marty to take up positions on the roof of the dealership, then asked Kane for an assessment on getting the trucks up and running.

“Shouldn’t take long,” Kane replied. “Unless the batteries are dead, which is possible. Wayne and Linus are in the garage gathering some tools.”

“Let’s make it happen,” Forrest said, starting back to the trucks to inform West and Price of their find.

Trudging through the hip-deep snowdrifts behind the dealership, he heard the women and children suddenly begin screaming, and he bolted toward the corner, knees high and his weapon at port arms. There were rifle shots, and the screaming reached a crescendo as his legs churned through the snow. Marty bashed his way through a locked glass door to join him at the run.

They rounded the corner to see a cluster of the women gathered near the back of a truck, all of them pointing into the dimness at two men scurrying away in tattered parkas where the snow was only knee-deep. Joann and West were giving chase, but the interlopers were outpacing them, and one carried a screaming child gripped in his arms.

Forrest stopped and sighted on the man lagging behind, who was trying to shield the abductor from West’s rifle. He fired and hit the man in the small of the back. The abductor, however, was too far off to risk hitting the child, so Forrest continued running for the truck, knowing he’d never catch the man before he disappeared into the night.

Marty fired at the interloper’s legs and missed.

“Marty, no! It’s too far!”

“But if he gets to those houses, we’ll never catch him before he kills her!”

Forrest could see two dead men in the snow near the trucks now, where Price was staggering to his feet, holding his head.

“The dog!” Forrest screamed. “Price, the dog!”

Price whirled drunkenly around and scrabbled onto the running board of the truck where Laddie was barking savagely to get out. He pulled the handle to open the door and fell away as the dog leapt from the cab and went tearing off through the snow, quickly overtaking Joann and West as he gave chase into the shadowy neighborhood.

“Save my baby!” Joann shrieked as she stumbled, then fell forward into the dirty fluff. “Laddie, please save my baabyyyy!”

“Jack, I’m sorry, they came outta nowhere!” West shouted as Forrest and Marty ran past him. Emory and the other men were responding now, but they were still fighting their way through the deep snowdrifts.

“That way, Marty! Flank his ass to the right around those houses!”

The light was fading fast and there was no time to go back for their night vision goggles. They could still hear Beyonce screaming for her mother somewhere ahead of them, but they knew it wouldn’t be long before her captor put her to death to silence her screams.

Running for his life, the raggedy man felt his muscles burning, fear and exhilaration gripping his heart. He was nearly home free, but he needed to shut the kid up fast or those bastards with the guns would catch him even in the dark. His stomach twisted as he weaved his way through the yards, feeling the child’s plump and tender limbs through her coat and pants. His salivary glands were already working, smelling her soapy scent, already tasting her juicy, fire-roasted meat, salted and sweet in his mouth.

He had dropped his knife during the scuffle, having underestimated the tall black broad’s strength. What had these people been eating all this time? How were they so healthy? It didn’t matter. They had obligingly seen fit to kill his three cohorts for him, so if he could just make it to the sewer, he’d be free and clear with enough meat to last him for the next couple of weeks.

He decided to jam his thumb deep into the child’s eye socket to kill her on the run, but she was struggling and he mistakenly jammed his thumb into her mouth. Beyonce sank her teeth to the bone, and the raggedy man gritted his teeth and swore in anger as he bounded down the alley toward the open manhole, clouting her clumsily about the face and head until she let loose. The path through the snow here was well traveled and the going was fast.

At last he arrived at the manhole, laughing in victory as he held the child by her ankles over the opening, certain the twenty-foot fall would shut her up for good. But before he could drop her, he was slammed from behind by a 110-pound German shepherd moving at top speed. The man and the girl both flew clear of the hole, and the dog sank its teeth deep into his emaciated thigh, thrashing its head back and forth like an angry mako shark, easily separating muscle from bone, severing the femoral artery.

The man screamed in agony and beat at the dog’s head in the dark, having no earthly idea what sort of beast was killing him. Was it a bear? No! It was a fucking wolf! Holy hell! Where the fuck did a wolf come from? And why was it eating him instead of the child?

Forrest stumbled onto the well-traveled path and raced along it, following the sound of Beyonce’s continued screams. Marty hurled himself over a backyard fence and fell in behind him, flashlight in hand to light the way.

“There!” he shouted, spotting the screaming child ahead of them on the far side of the manhole.

Laddie was sitting beside her, licking her face in a desperate effort to give her comfort while she continued to shriek.

In a fury, Forrest leapt past the girl to land on the raggedy man’s body, caving in his skull with the butt of his carbine. Marty snatched the child up, asking her if she was hurt, but all she did was scream.

“I think she’s okay. Can’t tell for sure.”

“Get back!” Forrest ordered, directing Marty and the dog away from the open sewer, slinging his weapon. He stuffed the man’s fetid carcass into the hole and dropped a phosphorus grenade in after it.

“Fire in the hole!” he shouted as Kane and Sullivan arrived on the scene, all of them ducking as a white flash of light erupted from the chasm with a muffled bang.

“Is she okay?” Sullivan asked, his chest heaving.

“I think she’s fine,” Marty said over her cries. “She’s just terrified.”

“What about you?” Kane asked, shining his own light on Forrest, seeing the dead man’s blood on his uniform.

Forrest nodded. “Get that child back to the truck before she draws more of these animals.”

“Let’s go, John,” Marty said. “This kid needs her mama.”

Forrest watched them go. “See how fucking close it was?” he shouted at Kane, pointing at the hole, shaking with rage. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ! What the fuck were they doing, Marcus? Playing grab-ass?”

“Man, I don’t know. They’re just doctors.”

“I told ’em, watch the fuckin’ kids!” Forrest howled, remembering the blasted bodies of the children in the Afghan desert, the missing arms and legs, the endless pleading for their mothers who had almost always preceded them in death.

“It’s cool!” Kane shouted. “The dog saved the fuckin’ day, man. That’s all that matters.”

Forrest dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around his dog, burying his face in its fur and thanking the animal for doing what he and his men had failed to do.

West met them on the way back, nearly in tears with shame. “Jack, I—”

Forrest threw his arms around the doctor and clutched him tight, kissing him on the cheek and speaking into his ear. “Let it go. It’s not a mistake you’ll ever make again.”

When they got back to the truck, Joann jumped down from the back to hug the dog, bawling with gratitude in the light of the Hummer’s headlamps.

Forrest pretended not to notice that Veronica was watching him teary-eyed from the back of the truck. He gave orders for the battered Price to lay down and rest and for the vehicles to be moved around back while the snowcats were prepped.

“That guy’s still alive over there,” Marty said quietly. “The one you shot.”

“Is he, now?” Forrest turned and walked through the snow to where the man lay on his back, with West kneeling alongside him examining the exit wound to his belly. Emory knelt opposite, holding a green cyalume stick to provide light enough for him see. “That’s enough, Sean.”

“I’m just—”

“That’ll be all, Doctor.”

“Sir!” West replied, got to his feet and moved off.

“Make sure Price is okay. Go with him, Shannon.”

“What are you gonna do?” she asked, rising.

He grinned and took a pack of smokes from his breast pocket. “You know? For a soldier, you don’t take orders for shit.”

She smiled in the green light. “Orders my ass. What are you gonna do?”

He shook another cigarette from the pack, lit it off of the first and knelt in the snow to put it between the dying man’s chapped lips. “How’s that, partner?”

“It’s good,” the man croaked, holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and feeling the nicotine hit him quickly. “Been a long time.” He was bearded and his skin was covered in open sores. The eyes were hard and there was no fear in them.

“How many more of you pricks I gotta worry about?”

“We’re the last of the—” The man shook with a tremor of pain and held his exploded belly. “—of the holdouts.”

“No military types about?”

“Not anymore. Moriarty’s animals pulled out last year… with all the food.”

Forrest took a long drag. “You’ll be happy to hear I shot Moriarty in the face.”

Smiling crookedly now, the man said, “Then this was a good day to die.” His eyes glassed over and he was gone.

Forrest stood and turned to Emory. “You and Marty join Sullivan up on the roof, keep watch through the infrared in case this prick was lying.”

“Sir!”

“Anything moves out there, anything at all… kill it.”

An hour later both of the used Bombardiers were running like a pair of tops, but the Tucker didn’t want to fire up, and it took another hour of tinkering with the engine to get it running. After they had all three snowcats running, the food, fuel, and equipment were transferred into the larger, four-track orange Tucker vehicle, then the women and children were moved into the heated cabins of the red Bombardiers. It was still a snug fit, but far preferable to sitting scrunched and cold in the back of the canvas-covered Army trucks.

The Tucker was twice as tall as the Bombardiers, so it would bring up the rear, with a pair of lookouts to keep watch over the small convoy as it slipped through the outskirts of Denver to the south, and headed up into the mountains along Interstate 70.

They drove all that night without lights at roughly thirty miles per hour, and by first light it was time to recharge the NVDs. They had crossed over the mountains by then, through spots where the snow was ten feet deep or more on the highway, and had to drive around the big green highway signs. They did not encounter a single living creature. Much of the forest had burned away, and all that remained for mile upon mile were the blackened trunks of charred trees.

By the time they crossed into Utah the depth of the snow was back down to three feet and it was time to stop and refuel.

“That’s the last of the fuel,” Kane said, wiping his hands with a rag as the seven fighting personnel gathered into a loose group. “But it’s more than enough to get us to the coast.”

“Who besides me expects trouble once we start getting close to the ocean?” Forrest asked.

Everyone lifted a hand.

“Good,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Then there shouldn’t be any surprises.”

Price came dragging himself through the snow.

“Something wrong?” Forrest asked.

“Lynette needs to go number two,” Price said. “Do we have time for her to use that Porta-John over there?”

“Sure,” Forrest said. “Might not be a bad idea for everyone to go again before we get moving.”

They continued talking as Lynette wrestled her way through the now thigh-deep snow to the Porta-John in the center median near an earthmover. She kicked the snow away from the door with her legs then went inside.

A second later she came back out screaming hysterically. The screams seemed to carry for miles across the barren snowscape.

“Somebody shut that bitch up!” Ulrich hissed.

“Easy,” Forrest said, watching Price running toward her through the snow.

Lynette threw herself into his arms and stood blubbering into his shoulder. After he calmed her down, he took a look inside the Porta-John, then walked her back to the snowcat. He came over to tell Forrest and the others that there was a woman’s head in the frozen slop at the bottom of the toilet.

“How’s your head?” Forrest asked, taking a drag from the cigarette and pointing at the goose egg on Price’s forehead.

“I’ll live,” he said. “I’m sorry Lynette’s been such a pain.”

“She hasn’t been a pain for any of us,” Forrest said. “She keeps it interesting.”

Price let out a sardonic chuckle and made his way through the snow back to the snowcat where his wife sat trembling in Taylor’s arms.

Forrest got the map out and took a bearing with a compass. From this point they would no longer be following the interstate. The snow was deep enough for them to drive straight overland toward San Diego, which would save them a great deal of time and mileage as they crossed southern Utah. Forrest also hoped it would decrease their chances of being ambushed by the type of people who chopped off women’s heads and dumped them into Porta-Johns.

It had grown dark again when they reached the Nevada border, where it was time to make a decision: Cross the Hoover Dam or keep heading south to skirt around it?

“I don’t think we want any part of that pass,” Marty warned. “Suppose the dam’s still operationa—”

“The crews would have split ages ago,” Ulrich said, almost dismissing him.

“Yeah, but suppose somebody’s figured out how to run the place? We’re talking about an endless source of heat for that facility, a good place for an army of cannibals to make their home. Tell ’em, Shannon.”

“He’s got a point,” Emory said. “It’s a safe bet that some military unit took it over early on.”

“And what do you suppose they’re doing for food two years into a global famine?” Ulrich asked.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Maybe they’re getting fat off the people who are too fuckin’ stupid to stay away!”

Forrest laughed, holding his red light over the map where he crouched in the snow at their feet, tracing his finger southward. “I don’t know what they’d be eating, and I’ve got no interest in finding out. We’ll take your advice and cross the river farther down… closer to Needles.”

By first light they were crossing into California, and the Tucker began to have engine trouble again, finally stalling completely and refusing to restart.

“I don’t know what the hell it is,” Kane said after trying for half an hour to get the engine running. “Damn thing’s brand new. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s ice in the fuel line. It can’t be much over five or six degrees out here today.”

“Do you recommend we leave it?” Forrest asked in the middle of playing fetch with Laddie. “Or do you think it’s worth trying to fix?”

“If I’m wrong about it being ice in the line, we could spend another two or three hours and have nothing to show for it.”

“Then screw it,” Forrest said, wrestling the stick away from his dog. “Pack everybody into the Bombardiers and let’s get the hell outta here.”

By the time it was dark they had reached the now deserted U.S. Marine Corps training grounds north of Twenty-nine Palms, where Forrest brought them to a halt.

“Okay,” he announced. “We’re three hours from Oceanside, where the USS Boxer is supposed to be anchored just out of sight from the shore.”

“We goin’ in tonight or waitin’ for first light?” Kane asked.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Forrest said, having already made up his mind to press on.

“I think daylight only increases our chances of being spotted,” Emory said. “We should keep taking advantage of our NVDs.”

“That’s where I come out too,” Sullivan said, a glance around telling him that everyone else felt the same.

“Who needs Benzedrine?” Forrest asked.

Everyone needed it, so he dumped three capsules into everyone’s hand.

“Only one at a time,” he reminded them. “The other two are for emergencies only. If all goes well, you’ll be aboard ship long before you ever need them.”

Then he climbed aboard the first cat with Dr. West.

“Okay, ladies, I want you all to listen carefully and not make a sound,” Forrest said, taking one of the titanium vials from his pocket and holding it up for them all to see in the light of the cab. “I’m not going to spell out its purpose for obvious reasons, but there is one NASA approved cyanide capsule inside each one of these vials. Every mom gets one for herself and one for each of her kids. You will keep them in your pants pockets, and you will not take them out unless there’s an emergency. Is that understood?”

The mothers nodded with fearful looks in their eyes, but said nothing for fear of upsetting the children.

“What is that for, Mommy?” one the little girls asked as Dr. West was doling out the vials.

“It’s astronaut medicine, honey. In case we get exposed to some really bad germs.”

Forrest left and gave the same presentation to the mothers aboard the second snowcat, and then they were off.

No one realized that it was Christmas Eve.

Sixty-Five

“Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.”

Captain Bisping trotted up the ladder and onto the bridge less than a minute later. “What do you have, Mr. O’Leary?”

“Algonquin reports a Chinese sub coming to periscope depth ten miles off the port bow, sir.”

“Jesus Christ!” Bisping said, stepping to the far window for a look. “Make sure this ship is blacked completely out. How did a sub get so goddamn close without Algonquin hearing it?”

“It’s a Song Class, sir. Diesel-electric.”

“Shit,” Bisping said in disgust.

“Bridge, Radar,” came the voice of the radar operator. “Periscope out of the water ten miles off the port bow. She’s not moving, sir.”

“Duncan, I want a pair of Sea Kings armed and in the air yesterday—and without lights.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Brooks, find out if Algonquin is disposed to destroy that submarine. I can’t see her in this ink.”

“Sir, Algonquin advises she has loaded war-shot into her tubes, but she’s not at optimum angle for launch. She’s asking if you want her to come about.”

“Negative!” Bisping said. “I don’t want anybody doing anything to tip them off. Algonquin isn’t to even flood her tubes.”

“Aye, sir… Algonquin advises she is standing by.”

“We’re a sitting duck,” Bisping muttered. “Be sure that Algonquin advises us the second that sub moves or opens its outer tube doors.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Duncan, quietly spread the word that I want the crew ready to abandon ship,” Bisping ordered.

“Aye, Skipper.”

“We can’t even run the engines up to full power without them hearing us,” Bisping grumbled. He took the phone from the wall and called down to the engine room.

“Chief, it’s the captain. Listen, there’s a Chinese electric resting at periscope depth ten miles off our port bow. She’s got us dead-nuts with both bow anchors on the bottom. We can’t even slip the chains without tipping them off. I want you to do everything you can down there without making any goddamn noise so you’ll be ready to get those engines up and roaring in full reverse the second I give you the word. Understood?”

“I’ll have her ready to pull a hole shot, Captain.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear, Chief.” Bisping hung up the phone and grabbed the one next to it. “Radar, I want to know if that periscope moves even an inch. Understood?… Good.”

He went back to the window, making doubly sure no was smoking down on the flight deck.

“Captain, both Sea Kings report ready for takeoff.”

“Get them into air.”

“Captain! Algonquin reports the submarine is blowing ballast and coming to the surface!… And she’s opening her outer tube doors!”

“Stay those helicopters!” Bisping ordered. “That sub captain so much as hears a rotor blade and he’ll launch.”

Bisping stood trying to figure a way out of the mess. We can kill them, he thought to himself, but not before they’ve killed us.

“Maybe they don’t want to fight,” O’Leary said. “They’ve had plenty of opportunity to fire.”

“After what we did to their destroyers? I find that very hard to believe.”

Ensign Allister Miller cleared his throat. “I don’t think she knows we’re here, sir.”

Bisping turned to him in the red dim. “Explain yourself, Mr. Miller.”

“Well, sir, we’ve been resting quietly at anchor all day,” Miller replied. “Only Algonquin’s had her boilers up to steam, so she’s the one the bastards are likely homing in on. They’re probably hoping she’ll lead them to us in the dark. And they can’t go on active sonar without tipping their hand any more than we can power up or launch our choppers without tipping ours.”

“Which is why they’ve come to the surface,” Bisping said. “To use their eyes and ears. Very good, Mr. Miller. You’re a lieutenant jg now. If we get out of this without losing the ship, I’ll promote you to first.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Duncan, get Commander Reese up here on the double.”

“Aye, sir.”

Reese was the commander of the ten-man SEAL team aboard the Boxer. He was a short, hard-bodied sailor who had been in the Navy since John Paul Jones was a baby, and he was known for getting the job done under very sticky circumstances.

He stepped onto the bridge, announcing: “Commander Reese reporting as ordered, Captain.”

“Mr. Reese, has your team ever rehearsed the taking of a Chinese submarine resting quietly on the surface?”

A grin spread across the commander’s face. “Not exactly, sir. Though similar scenarios have come up in conversation once or twice.”

“So you have some ideas on how such a feat of arms might be accomplished?”

“Oh, I’ve got some very definite ideas, Captain. How close is she?”

“Ten miles at the moment, but I expect that to change as soon as this captain I’m up against begins to grow some balls.”

“If their hatch is open, Captain, I guarantee we’ll take the con. What I cannot guarantee is taking it before they fire their torpedoes.”

“What do you need?”

“We’ve got everything we need in our kit. We can power right out to the boat below the surface on electric motors.”

“This kind of darkness won’t be a problem?”

“For the Chinese, yes. Us, no. All we’ll need from Boxer is a comm link to find out whether the sub is moving. I’ll break the surface every ten minutes to check in on that.”

“How soon can you be in the water?”

“From this moment? Less than twenty.”

“How long to the sub?”

“If she stays right where she is, an hour.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to get wet, Commander.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

Bisping noticed the concern on Commander O’Leary’s face. “Something on your mind, Duncan?”

“No, sir.”

“If we’re torpedoed, Duncan. They’re going into the water anyhow, only without their wet suits.”

“Aye, sir.”

Forty minutes later Commander Reese carefully broke the surface of the water in total blackness to check in with the Boxer about the position of the Chinese submarine.

“Be advised, Aqualung, the target has closed to within five miles and is sitting still once again.”

“Clear,” Reese murmured, raising his infrared scope to see that the sub now lay only a couple of hundred yards ahead of them. “I have visual.”

He then slipped silently back beneath the water.

Below the surface, neither Reese nor any of his men were able to see anything that wasn’t lighted or glowing, and with the murk of ash and sediment now spoiling the seas, they weren’t even able to see that beyond ten feet or so.

He wrote a short message on a diving board in fluorescent chalk telling his men that the target now lay only a couple hundred yards ahead of them. He then wrote in a kind of shorthand that they would motor past the sub fifty yards off the port side, then circle around to approach her from the stern.

Sixty-Six

About the same time that Commander Reese and his SEAL team were first getting wet, Forrest and his flock were turning down a side street in the outskirts of Oceanside. They were still running without lights to avoid being spotted as they drew closer to the shore, all of the fighting men wearing NVDs. The snow was only inches deep in Southern California, but the snowcats ran equally well on dry land.

The women in the lead transport began to notice a dim glow illuminating the street ahead of them.

“What’s that light?” someone in the lead vehicle said as they rounded a corner.

“What light?” Forrest answered, reaching to lift his night vision device so he could see what they were talking about.

A Molotov cocktail exploded on the roof of the snowcat. Another exploded on the hood of the vehicle behind them, momentarily engulfing both cats in bright orange balls of flame.

Laddie started barking furiously, and the women and children screamed in horror as both Forrest and Ulrich applied full throttle in an attempt to get clear of what was obviously an ambush.

Ulrich shouted for everyone aboard his cat to get down, even as Sullivan, Emory, and Marty were shooting out the windows and pouring fire into the three-story apartment building on the left side of the street.

“How are they seeing us?” Marty shouted, spotting a man step from a doorway and taking careful aim at the lead snowcat before pulling the trigger on a hunting rifle.

Sullivan flipped up his NVD and looked around, now seeing that every building along the both sides of the street had been painted with a fluorescent green paint, which even late into the night was casting a dim glow over the entire street.

“Wayne, back up!” he shouted, realizing that to continue down the street would spell certain death. “The street’s illuminated!”

“What?” Ulrich flipped up his own NVD, immediately seeing the paint. “Jesus Christ!”

He got on the radio and told Forrest what was going on, but it was too late. Grenades went off beneath the engines of both snowcats and knocked them out.

“Everybody out!” Ulrich shouted, seeing their worst nightmare unfolding before his eyes. Bullets struck him in the center of his back, impacting against his armor, but none of the women or children were hit as they jumped from the vehicle. “Sullivan, they’re targeting the men!”

The fire was coming from the left side of the street, so they were momentarily shielded in the lee of the snowcat. Ulrich could hear Laddie barking down the street as he took a quick head count and saw that he was missing two civilians. Ducking quickly back aboard, he found that both Liddy and Natalie had bitten into their cyanide capsules.

“Goddamnit!” he muttered, scrambling back to the sidewalk.

“We gotta get under better cover,” Sullivan said, scanning the darkened street around the corner with the NVD. “Wayne, there’s a pharmacy around the block. It looks deserted.”

“Get the women and children to cover,” Ulrich ordered. “I’m going to try to link up with Jack’s group.”

“Sir!”

Sullivan, Emory, and Marty began to herd Erin, Taylor, Lynette, Tonya, Maria two, Jenny, Michelle, West, Price, and all of the children around the corner toward the pharmacy.

Ulrich didn’t make it more than a step down the street before taking a round in the gut just below his armor. He dove behind a stack of trash cans and began crawling down the sidewalk toward Forrest’s group, where Laddie was still barking wildly. They were all still trying to work their way back to the corner, moving from parked car to parked car, but then they came to a gap far too wide for them to cross.

“You’re cut off, Jack,” Ulrich told him over the radio.

“Any suggestions?”

“Take cover in one of the buildings on this side of the street and escape out the back. We’ll try to link up with you on the next street over.”

“Roger that,” Forrest said, signaling for Kane to break into one of the buildings. “Watch your ass, Stumpy. They’re only shooting at the men.”

“I know,” Ulrich said before getting painfully to his feet and scrambling back to the corner and down the block to the pharmacy where Sullivan and the others had taken cover.

“We won’t last here,” Sullivan said. “They’re already taking up positions across the street.”

“We need to get out the back and link up with Jack’s group on the next street over,” Ulrich said. “Otherwise we’re looking at a complete goat fuck here.”

The women and children were in the dark again, so the soldiers gave them a couple of red lights, telling them not to shine them unless they were moving and needed to see where they were going.

Ulrich and Sullivan went to the back door and opened it to a hail of bullets.

“Fuck!” Sullivan said, reeling away from the door. “Got my fuckin’ arm!”

“Well, I’m already gut shot,” Ulrich said.

“You’re shitting me!”

“Jack,” Ulrich said over the net. “We’re cut off. Stuck inside the pharmacy.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Forrest replied. “We’re stuck inside a goddamn porn shop. Never seen so many dildos in my goddamn life.”

Everyone on the net chuckled in spite of the tense situation.

“Listen, Stumpy,” Forrest said. “You have to get out of there on your own somehow. Work your way to the beach and declare Rotten Dog.”

“Why me?” Ulrich said. “You’re half a block closer and I’m missing a fucking foot.”

“The three of us are already shot up too bad down here,” Forrest said. “And Mike just isn’t the man for the job.”

“Listen, Jack, I’m gut shot. I’ll never make the beach. I’ll have to send Sullivan.”

Forrest was silent for a moment, asking finally, “How bad, Stumpy?”

“Bad enough. The Navy’s our only chance now, Jack. We’ll never fight our way to the beach with all these women and children.”

One of the women screamed from the front of the store.

“Gotta go, Jack.”

Ulrich and Sullivan moved to the front of the store to find West and Price kneeling behind the counter beside the bodies of Tonya and her son Steven.

“Everyone needs to move into the back now,” Sullivan said quickly, herding the others into the storeroom.

The baby was crying in Erin’s arms, and Taylor was hovering close by her, keeping her own two children close. Marty and Emory covered the front of the store from behind a makeshift barricade of overturned shelving.

“What the fuck happened, Sean?” Ulrich asked, painfully taking a knee beside West in the red glow of two flashlights.

“She used the cyanide,” West said quietly.

“Goddamnit,” Ulrich swore. “Liddy and Natalie did the same fucking thing. I’m taking it away from the others.”

“No,” West said, grabbing his arm. “It’s their right, Wayne. We all agreed.”

“But goddamnit!”

“What’s going on with Jack’s group?”

“We’re all cut off from the beach. And we’re cut off from each other. Sullivan’s going to make a run for the beach.”

“No, I’m not,” Sullivan said, standing in the doorway. “I just lost the use of my right hand.”

West examined his wounded arm to find that the bullet had shattered his ulna.

“I guess that leaves Marty,” Ulrich said. “Unless you want the job, Sean.”

“I can’t leave Taylor or the kids,” West said. “I promised them. Besides, Marty’s better with a weapon than I am.”

“We have to send Shannon with him,” Sullivan said. “Marty won’t make it alone. His instincts aren’t good enough. But he listens to Shannon.”

“All right, then,” Ulrich said. “You and Sean replace them up front and send them back here.”

“Just how bad are you, Wayne?” West asked, pissed that Ulrich hadn’t told him he’d been shot.

“It’s bad enough that I’ll croak if we don’t make it to the ship,” Ulrich said.

“How much Benzedrine have you taken?”

“Enough to see this through one way or another.”

West asked Price to take his place up front so he could bind Ulrich’s belly wound.

Emory and Marty came around behind the counter where a blanket now lay over Tonya and her son.

“You two have to make a break for the beach,” Ulrich said. “Find lifeguard station number six. A SEAL team has buried a radio in the sand beneath it. Our call sign is Halo. Be sure and tell them that our condition is Rotten Dog. That will tell them to send the Marines in, expecting a fight.”

“Got it,” Emory said. “Come on, Marty, let’s rock and roll these motherfuckers.”

She took him into the stockroom to check him over with a flashlight. “Nothing rattles and nothing shines. Got it?”

“I’m cocked and locked,” he muttered. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“The back door is no joy,” Sullivan said. “You’ll have to go out the front. But we’ll pop smoke both front and back to keep them guessing.”

“Fuck it,” Emory said. “You can hardly fucking see out there as it is.”

“I think there must be one or two out there with night vision,” Ulrich said, grunting as West bound his middle with a cotton wrap. Erin came from the stockroom and knelt beside him, crying into his neck. “Where’s the baby?” he asked.

“With Taylor.”

“Well, get on back there,” he said. “I’ve still got work to do out here. And don’t worry, I won’t be dying in the next ten minutes.”

“I have O-negative blood,” Erin told West.

“If he ends up needing it, honey, I’ll get some from you. I promise.”

A pair of smoke grenades were tossed out the front and back of the store a short time later, and gunfire filled the air as the clouds began to grow.

Emory grabbed hold of Marty’s jacket at the shoulder. “When they stop to reload, we move.”

“Right behind you.”

The firing slacked off and they made their break, running left down the sidewalk into the darkness.

A shot rang out and hit the sidewalk, a piece of a bullet ricocheting up into Marty’s rump. “I just got hit in the ass!” he swore, grabbing at the seat of his pants.

“Better than your balls. Keep moving!”

They stopped at the end of the street to catch their breath.

“You know what?” he said, panting. “We can see better with the night vision now than we could last year. That means there’s more ambient light. The sky’s beginning to clear.”

Emory raised her NVD and held her hand up in front of her face, unable to see it.

“Whatever you say, Marty.”

Half a block down they spotted a band of six men using a single weak flashlight to make their way toward the porn shop where Forrest and his group were holed up. They were a motley crew, dressed piecemeal in military clothing, but there was no telling whether they had ever been Marines. They were scrawny and wore long scraggly beards. One of them had a LAW rocket slung over his shoulder.

“We have to take them out,” she said. “That rocket will kill everybody in Jack’s building.”

The two of them hustled off through the snow after their prey, and Marty stepped on a soda can beneath the snow, its muffled crunch just loud enough for the men to hear.

They spun around as Marty and Emory dove for cover behind a burned out car.

“Who’s behind us?” one the men asked the others, their flashlight too dim to penetrate into the murk. “Any of our people?”

“Maybe Wallace and Cutter. I ain’t sure.”

“Wallace!”

“What?” Marty shouted.

“You comin’, asshole?”

“Go ahead! Sprained my fuckin’ ankle!”

The men moved on, and Emory punched Marty in his helmet, hissing, “You ever do that again, I’ll kick the shit outta you!”

By the time they worked their way to within fifty feet of the men, the man with the rocket was down on one knee, about to fire it into the back door of the porn shop. Emory fired a burst from the hip in a vertical arc, stitching the rocketeer up the spine. The man folded over backward and the rocket went streaking off into the sky over top of the buildings, detonating three or four blocks away.

“Wallace, you dumb fuck!” shouted the man with the flashlight.

Emory shot him next, and the flashlight fell into the snow, leaving the remaining four to fire blindly into the black. Emory and Marty lay prone watching their prey make idiots of themselves. They each fired two quick bursts and sprang to their feet.

More men came running toward the sound of the fight, dim beams of light searching wildly about, but Emory and Marty withdrew to slip away undetected. They quickly covered the half mile to the beach, meeting no further resistance before reaching the surf and running to the closest lifeguard station.

It was number nine.

“North or south?” Emory said. “You pick.”

“North.”

The next station they came to was number eight, and within a few minutes they arrived at station six. They kicked away the snow and Marty began digging in the sand while Emory kept watch. A foot down he found a sealed, black polymer case the size of a large tackle box and pried it from the ground.

“You keep an eye out,” Emory said, kneeling in front of the case to open it. She turned on the radio and took out the hand set, holding it to her head the way you would a regular phone and depressing the button. “This is Halo calling Boxer. Do you read? Over.”

There was no reply.

“Halo calling Boxer. Our condition is Rotten Dog. Repeat. We are Rotten Dog. Do you read? Over…”

“Maybe you should try switching channels.”

“No, Marty, you don’t fuck with a preset frequency. It’s probably just some squid asleep at the radio. They don’t have anything else to do out there.”

“Halo calling USS Boxer. Do you read? Over… Halo calling Boxer. Do you read… ?”

Sixty-Seven

Aboard the Boxer, Captain Bisping was quite busy—or at least he had a hell of a lot on his mind. For one thing, he was still feeling very much like a sitting duck on an open pond. The Boxer had enough ordnance aboard to kill the Chinese vessel dozens of times over, but if he so much as flinched, the submarine’s passive sonar would pick up the sound, and the Chinese captain would beat him to the trigger by more than five minutes—the approximate time it would take to get an antisub warfare helicopter into position to drop a depth charge. Not even the Algonquin could be in position to fire in under a minute, her tubes aimed over ninety degrees in the wrong direction.

“Captain! I’ve got Halo on the emergency band. They’re declaring Rotten Dog.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Bisping declared. “Now, of all goddamn times!” He looked to his executive officer. “Who is it, Duncan, who keeps insisting there are no more wars left to fight?”

“I believe that’s President Thorn, sir.”

“Mr. Brooks, get a message off to Pearl.”

“Yes, sir. ”

“Message to read as follows: ‘Engaged in battle by land and sea. Merry fucking Christmas.’”

“Word for word, sir?”

“Yes, Mr. Brooks. Word for fucking word. And somebody call Gunny Beauchamp to the bridge. Talk about fighting a battle with both hands tied behind your goddamn back.”

He took the handset from Brooks. “Halo this is Boxer. Over.”

“Boxer, be advised we are Rotten Dog. Our main force is pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine. Over.”

“Halo, say again all after main force. Over.”

“Pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine. Over.”

Bisping gave O’Leary an ironic grimace and muttered, “That’s what I thought she said.”

“Stand by, Halo. We are presently engaged in a sea battle but will send Marine detachment ashore ASAP. Over.”

“What is their ETA? Over.”

“Stand by, Halo.”

“Don’t keep us waiting too long, Boxer. Our tit’s in the wringer!”

“We read you,” Bisping said, giving the handset back to Brooks. “Her tit may be in the wringer but my balls are on the block.”

Beauchamp came onto the bridge and saluted crisply, snapping immediately to attention. “Gunnery Sergeant Beauchamp reporting as—”

“At ease, Gunny.”

“Sir.”

“Are your devil dogs ready to go ashore?”

“That’s affirmative, sir.”

“Well be advised, Gunny, you and your men will be going very soon, and your condition will be Rotten Dog. Our evacuees have apparently gotten themselves pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine.”

“And if we’re torpedoed, sir?”

“Then you’ll be going ashore indefinitely. Either way, Gunny, you’re on in less than ten.”

“Oorah, sir.”

Five miles out to sea, as Commander Reese and his men were creeping toward the sail of the Chinese submarine, they felt the boat lurch forward, its electric motors kicking on to propel the submarine very slowly through the water, barely raising a wake.

Through the murk at that distance, Reese was just able to make out the Boxer’s silhouette lying some five miles distant, but only because he knew exactly where she was and what to look for. In a very short time, however, the Chinese officer watching eastward through his own night vision scope from atop the sail would be making a positive identification and calling below to his captain, who would then—in all likelihood—give the order to launch a full spread of torpedoes at both the Boxer and Algonquin.

There were no ladder rungs on the almost thirty-foot-tall sail of a Song Class submarine the way there were on old fashioned subs, which meant that Reese and his men had to form a human ladder in order for him to reach the rear sail plane jutting backward twenty feet above the pressure hull. Even from atop the sail plane it still took two men standing on one another’s shoulders for Reese to climb the final ten feet. Once atop the sail, he moved quickly forward to the observer’s station, where the Chinese officer was studying the pitch-black shoreline.

Reese heard the man draw an excited breath and saw him reach for the phone, obviously having just spotted the Boxer. He dropped down into the observer’s station and grabbed the officer from behind, gripping him under the jaw with his left hand to twist his face away, jamming a killing knife up through the base of his skull and giving the blade a sharp twist, leaving Reese holding a veritable rag doll. He lay the man down and signaled over the net for the rest of his men to join him.

The next man to reach the top of the sail lowered a knotted rope for six others. Two SEALs would remain down on the hull to kill anyone attempting to escape through the bow or stern hatchways.

As expected, the observer’s hatch was sealed from inside, so Reese signaled for Chief Petty Officer Chou to do his thing. Chou picked up the phone, saying in a sickly voice to whomever it was that answered: “Man, I just got a real bad case of the shits!” Or whatever the Cantonese equivalent of that was.

The wheel began to turn on the hatch, and the SEALs prepared to do battle.

The somewhat bemused Chinese sailor below was standing in a compartment illuminated only in dim red light, and he was opening the hatch into absolute darkness, so he didn’t see the silencer of the MP-5 submachine gun Reese was aiming down into his face.

Reese squeezed off a single round and shot the sailor straight through the forehead, dropping him to the deck with a dull thud. He was down the ladder in a split second, moving rapidly into the next compartment, where he gunned down two more unsuspecting sailors standing at the periscope. He waited until the rest of his men were formed up behind him before sliding down the ladder into the next compartment. From there, half of the team made their way forward toward the control room. The other half remained in position to prevent their line of retreat from being blocked.

Reese and the other three walked boldly into the con and opened fire. The startled Chinese sailors screamed as they died, but the captain of the boat kept his head, leaping for the launch buttons.

Reese fired and killed him, but not before the captain managed to launch a single torpedo.

“Captain! Algonquin reports hydrophone effect! One torpedo in the water—it’s got us dead-bang!”

“Slip both anchors!” Bisping ordered. “All engines full reverse!”

“Launch helicopters!” O’Leary announced simultaneously over the MC. “Launch amphibious craft! All hands rig for impact!”

Having also been prepared for this eventuality, the Algonquin had long since off-loaded the majority of her crew into lifeboats, leaving only the captain, the sonar officer, and a few engineers aboard. The engineers applied full power to the destroyer’s propellers, then scrambled up to the weather deck as the Algonquin captain put his ship into full reverse. She had good power but was starting from a dead stop, so she didn’t move quickly at first. Even so, her captain was hoping against heaven and hell to get the Algonquin into the torpedo’s path before it could detonate beneath the Boxer’s hull and break her spine.

Bisping stood on the bridge watching the other ship through a pair of NVDs as the Boxer oh-so-slowly began to back away. We’re moving as fast as mechanically possible, he thought, but we’ll never make it.

“Captain!” Brooks shouted. “Commander Reese reports he and his men have taken the con.” Bisping got on the radio immediately, ordering the helicopter pilots not to attack the submarine.

“All landing craft away, sir,” O’Leary announced. “The Marines should be ashore within five.” But Bisping didn’t hear him. He was once again watching to see whether his ship was going to be blown out from under him.

“Captain, Algonquin reports it’s going to be close.”

In the same moment, the torpedo passed directly beneath the screws of the Algonquin and, sensing her magnetic field, detonated, blowing off the destroyer’s stern in a huge white flash of froth and fire.

A cheer went up on the Boxer’s bridge.

“Knock it off!” Bisping ordered. “We just lost half our task force and this battle’s not over. Get me Commander Reese on the radio!”

A few seconds later Bisping was talking to Reese. “How do you want to play this, Commander? I want that sub sunk!”

“We can set demolition charges here in the con, sir, to destroy her controls. After that we can abandon ship, allowing you to sink her at your leisure. One of the helos can lift us out of the water.”

“How do you keep the Chinese sailors from killing you after you make it into the water?”

“I intend to leave this boat in flames, Captain. They’ll be too busy fighting the fires to bother with us. They haven’t even tried to retake the con yet, for Christ’s sake.”

“Very well,” Bisping said. “Get off that boat as quickly and safely as you can so I can sink the damn thing!”

“Roger that.”

Bisping then looked at O’Leary. “Launch two more ASWs,” he ordered. “I want them in position to provide covering fire for Reese and his men as they’re being picked out of the water. Then I want that pig sent to the bottom.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Sixty-Eight

Forrest, Kane, and Danzig were all pretty badly shot up. Only by the grace of God had the hits missed their vital organs; their body armor had done its job many times over, but they were all bleeding from multiple limb and shoulder wounds. Forrest was the worst for the wear, one round having penetrated his thigh and another having shattered his right ankle. Kane had bound the joint for him, wrapping an elastic bandage tightly around the canvas boot to help immobilize the foot and to stem the flow of blood, but the pain was intense when he applied any weight to the leg. So far, he had refused morphine, needing his head clear for the ongoing fight.

Veronica sat in the back corner behind the counter with Andie, Joann, Jessie, Renee, Maria, Karen, and the children. Michael, armed with a carbine, was lying in the hall covering the rear entrance, which they had barricaded with a desk and a filing cabinet.

Andie had been nicked in the chest and face by a ricochet, and Maria Vasquez had a bullet wound to her backside. A couple of the children were badly bruised up, and a few of them cried continuously.

Melissa sat in the dark beside Veronica, keeping Laddie on a short leash.

By now they had received word that Tonya had already taken her own life, as well as that of her son Steven, and the women were aghast. Kane had remained silent on the issue but Forrest knew he was blaming himself.

“Hey, she had eighteen happy months,” Forrest said, bumping Kane on the shoulder. “So did the boy. It’s more than what they would’ve had.”

“I told her not to worry,” Kane said quietly, not wanting the others to hear him. “That I’d come for her if anything happened.”

“Maybe we see it differently, partner, but from where I sit, she bailed before you could make good on that promise.”

“Don’t make me feel no better.”

“Ain’t tryin’ to make you feel better. I’m tryin’ to keep your head in the game.”

“My head’s in the game, Captain.”

Forrest crawled forward to peer up at the top balcony across the street. The building was only coated in fluorescent paint on the first floor level, so he still needed the NVD to see the upper levels. “I haven’t seen any movement over there for ten minutes. They’re up to something.”

“Yeah, but what?” said Danzig, crouching in the opposite corner.

They only had to wait a few seconds for the answer. The fuse popped on a grenade right outside the window to the left. Neither Forrest nor the others made a sound. All of them knew from experience that to shout a warning would only prevent them from hearing where the grenade landed. The steel orb hit with a thunk inside the showcase, where they were unable to grab it, but they did dive clear of the blast and were already bringing their weapons up as the first attackers came charging in through the smoke.

The women remained surprisingly quiet as Forrest and the others kept up a withering fire, effectively piling bodies up in the showcase window. By the time the enemy realized their surprise assault had failed, they had lost five men. The rest retreated around the side of the building.

Kane and Danzig moved quickly to strip the dead of weapons and ammo as Forrest kept an eye on the apartment across the street with Kane’s M-21 sniper rifle; Kane’s shoulder was too badly wounded for precision sniping. The first enemy to sneak a peek from the second floor balcony took a .308 through the center of his face, and Forrest just missed another the next level down, driving the man back inside. After searching the bodies and stacking them in the window, they retook their positions to either side.

“We can’t let them keep creeping up on us,” Forrest said. “If they come to the well like that enough times, they’re gonna get in.”

A Molotov cocktail landed on the sidewalk in front of the window and exploded, setting the clothing of the dead bodies on fire and illuminating the inside of the store.

“Everyone stay down! They’re trying to see in!”

Two men ran up on either side of the window and tossed in another pair of grenades, blasting the showcase apart and filling Danzig’s left side with shrapnel. He screamed in agony, and Jessie and Veronica both jumped from cover to drag him to safety.

“Stay down!” Danzig shouted, not wanting his wife to get herself killed, but they ignored him and finished pulling him behind the counter where the children were all screaming and the dog was going wild at the end of his leash.

“Jack, what the fuck is going on over there?” Sullivan’s voice sounded over the radio in Forrest’s ear.

“They’re storming the goddamn castle! Let me talk to Wayne.”

“He’s unconscious. Stand by. I’m coming to assist.”

“Negative! Hold your position. There’s nothing you can do for us!”

But Sullivan hadn’t heard him, having already peeled off the headset and given it to West. He ducked out of the pharmacy and ran to the corner. Scanning the cluttered greenish-black street through the NVD, he saw two men rifling the second snowcat for the MREs and shot them dead, dropping into the snow and taking aim, left-handed, on seven more men lining up outside the porn shop window, preparing to make another assault.

He opened fire on their legs, knowing many of them wore armor of their own, and the attackers danced about on the sidewalk in an almost comic display as the bullets tore the meat from their bones. They fell, scrabbling for cover through the snow on their hands and knees, but a grenade was lobbed from the porn shop window and it exploded in their midst, ripping many of them apart, though only killing two. The survivors lay in a bloody, screaming tangle on the walk.

As Sullivan stood to withdraw to the pharmacy, he was jumped by two stinking, hairy men. The NVD was bashed from his helmet and the carbine pried from his grip. Someone kicked him in the groin and he buckled, grabbing a grenade from his harness and pulling the pin with his teeth before stuffing it down the pants of an assailant.

The man cried out and let go of him, presumably to pull the grenade from his pants, but it was too dark for Sullivan to know for sure. His other attacker was still struggling to subdue him when the grenade went off. Sullivan felt himself fly through the air. He landed hard on his back, the left side of his face and neck full of shrapnel, his left arm nearly severed at the elbow and his left leg in tatters.

He blacked out.

He came to in total darkness a short time later, feeling hands probing his wounds, and grabbed ineffectually with his crippled right hand for the knife on his belt.

“Easy,” West said, gently catching the arm.

“You’re safe now,” Taylor said softly into his one good ear. “Sean brought you back in.”

“Jack’s group,” Sullivan murmured. “Are they… ?”

“They’re secure for the moment.” West was working feverishly beneath a flashlight to stanch the flow of blood from Sullivan’s wounds. “Whatever you did seems to have bought them some time.”

“You have to finish it,” Sullivan whispered, feeling the morphine carrying him away. “Finish it now… too many to hold off… saw them in the flash…”

West looked at Price, both of them realizing what that meant, and picked up the headset. “Jack, it’s Sean. Over.”

“Go ahead.”

“Jack, Sullivan says we’re about to be overwhelmed. He says we should all finish it now.”

“How does he know?”

“He’s unconscious but his exact words were ‘finish it now, too many to hold off.’”

“Can he make it?”

“No.”

“Go ahead and establish your own protocol there, Sean. We’re going to hold out here to the last possible moment. Tell T and E that I did my best, will ya?”

“They know that, Jack. We all know.”

“Wish I did, goddamnit. Godspeed, Sean.”

“What’s going on?” Taylor asked, panic in her eyes, her voice trembling.

“Go on in the back with the kids, sweetheart. I’ll be back to join you in a minute.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, starting to cry. “Sean, what are you going to do?”

“Price?”

“Come on, honey,” Price said gently, helping Taylor to her feet.

“Don’t, Sean. Please…”

West took one of the titanium vials from his jacket pocket and twisted off the lid, shaking the glass capsule into his hand. “God,” he said quietly, slipping the capsule between Sullivan’s molars. “Allow me to commend this man’s spirit into your good hands.”

He pressed upward on Sullivan’s jaw to crush the capsule between his teeth. Sullivan’s body tensed for an instant and then relaxed. West stood up and went into the back room.

“Erin,” he said gently. “We need to see about Wayne.”

“No, Sean!” Erin said, holding the baby in her arms and beginning to cry. “You’re not allowed. He’s my husband!”

“I won’t do anything without your permission, honey, but it’s time to make some decisions. We may only have seconds left.”

The other mothers were crying as well, their hands trembling as they took the vials from their pockets. By now the children realized the true purpose of the astronaut medicine and they were all crying as well.

“This is bullshit!” Lynette said in disgust. “To get this close—”

“Lynny…” Price said quietly.

West sat down with his kids and took Taylor’s hand. “There’s no reason for us to be afraid. We’re in God’s hands. Now everyone put a capsule under your tongue and join hands.”

Everyone did as he said.

“Will it hurt?” one of the little ones asked, sobbing.

“No, baby doll. You’ll just go to sleep and wake right back up in heaven with God. I promise.”

Erin couldn’t hold anyone’s hand, however; she would need them both for pinching capsules into the mouths of her husband and infant daughter. Jenny offered to help her but she refused.

“Can we all agree to wait until they come into the building?” Taylor asked through her tears. “Can we do that? I love you all so much!”

“I like that idea,” Michelle said, gripping her son’s hand. “Okay, baby? We’re all going to heaven at the same time, so make sure you wait for Mommy.”

“Okay, Mom,” the little boy said, seemingly unafraid.

West began to recite from the Twenty-third Psalm: “‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in—’”

Without warning Lynette let go of her husband’s hand and sprang to her feet, dashing for the front of the store, gripping a flashlight.

West let go of Taylor’s hand and jumped up to chase after her, but Price all but tackled him in the doorway.

“Price, what the hell are you doing?”

“You can’t catch her,” Price said, hearing Lynette scampering over the barricade. “Your place is here, Sean. She’s my wife…”

Lynette ran down the street and froze at the corner, shining the flashlight on a disbelieving horde of barbarous-looking men, who for a moment might have believed they were seeing an angel with flowing blond hair, were it not for the grenade she gripped in the opposite hand.

“Catch!” she said, lobbing it into the air over their heads and turning to run back toward the pharmacy.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” one of the men shouted as they scattered in the dark, none of them having any idea where the grenade would land. When it did land it rolled beneath a car where two men had taken cover, wounding them both upon detonation and prompting their comrades to move in and finish them off quickly in accordance with the laws of the wild.

Lynette stumbled in her dash for the pharmacy and was caught from behind by her hair and shoved into a lamppost, knocking the flashlight from her hand. She struggled to keep her feet, tussling in the blackness with a surprisingly weak and apparently shorter man, gnashing her teeth lest she accidentally spit out the capsule of cyanide she still kept in her mouth. She slashed with her fingers, found the soft gelatinous orb of the attacker’s eyeball and grabbed him close, thrusting her thumb into the socket to claw it out. The man screamed and reeled away, but as she turned to run once more, she was struck by a vicious uppercut from an unseen fist that fractured her jaw, dropping her to her knees. She was not even remotely aware of the broken slivers of glass in her tongue as she fell forward onto her face.

Her body was lifted in the darkness as four men attempted to haul her off across the street, all of them thinking she was merely unconscious, but Price shot them down from behind then turned the carbine on the rest of the mob, which had reformed and was on the move. He was struck by a hail of bullets, the men trampling his body in their renewed assault on the pharmacy, kicking and pounding at the barricade to get inside.

“Not yet!” West told the women, breaking away from their prayers, his instinct for survival overriding all common sense as he grabbed his carbine and leapt into the doorway, firing into the mob at forty feet.

The attackers screamed and pulled back onto the walk, returning his fire.

Outside, the street erupted in a fusillade of automatic weapons fire and the attackers fell back from the pharmacy in confusion. West stood listening as the gunfire reached a crescendo, then he slammed the storeroom door and moved to cover the bodies of his wife and children with his own, shouting for everyone to spit out their capsules of cyanide.

Seconds later there was a cacophony of rapid 40mm cannon fire followed by the roaring sound of an 850 horse power Motoren-und Turbinen-Union diesel motor as it went rumbling past the building toward the corner.

“In here!” they heard Marty shout from the front of the store. “They’re in here!”

“Who brought the forty mike mike?” Danzig mumbled through a fog of morphine, his head resting in Jessie’s lap where they hid behind the counter in the porn shop.

“Jack!” Veronica shouted toward the front of the store. “What’s going on?”

Forrest climbed painfully up into the showcase and stole a quick glance west toward the corner. “Jesus Christ!” he said jumping back down and landing painfully on his bad ankle. “Everybody spit those fucking capsules out! Melissa!”

“I already did!”

“Is it the goddamn Marines or what?” Kane asked, sticking his head down from a crawl space in the ceiling. He and Forrest had decided that he would be the last one left alive, surviving them all just long enough to rain their last six grenades down upon their attackers after the shop had finally fallen and filled up with the enemy, an enemy that might rape the bodies of the women.

“Everybody stay ready,” Forrest cautioned, girding himself for the next onslaught, an old instinct telling him the fight was not yet over. “Kane, get down here!” he said, dropping to a crouch and shouldering his carbine.

A mob of men came pouring from three different apartments across the street, maybe twenty in all, hurling a grenade at the shop front.

Forrest and Kane fired into them even as the grenade exploded on the sidewalk. Laddie broke away from Melissa and bound past them, leaping over the bodies and out into the street, tearing into the first man he saw and ripping him screaming to the ground. The rest of the attackers recoiled in a moment of awe, astonished to see such a large dog, half expecting a pack of hungry wolves to come streaming out of the building.

One of them raised his weapon to shoot the animal but his head instantly exploded as a 230 grain, .45 caliber bullet blasted through his brain and slammed into the man behind him, killing them both.

Forrest stood defiantly among the many dying men at his feet, firing point-blank into the faces of the savages who would dare try to kill his son’s dog. Screaming as he charged into them, he grabbed up an empty carbine, swinging at their heads and splitting skulls as they reeled away in panic, their combat reflexes horribly degraded by starvation and disease.

Not all of them had lost their wits. One was returning his fire and scoring hits on Forrest’s armor and limbs, tracking him as he pivoted to the right, about to squeeze the trigger to blow out his brains. But suddenly, and to his horror, the dog sank its teeth into his testicles, frenziedly ripping them from side to side.

Kane smashed the man’s skull with the barrel of his carbine and grabbed the dog’s leash to haul him back inside. Glancing over his shoulder to see that Forrest had gone down, he dragged Laddie, snarling over the stacked bodies, and handed the leash to Melissa. He turned to dash out, but an unseen concussion grenade exploded just outside the window and hurled him back across the storefront into the counter, knocking him senseless. He tried to rise but collapsed and fell unconscious.

Bleeding badly, Forrest rolled beneath the hull of a pickup truck and blacked out as the Marines came charging up the street, supported by a second EFV, its 40mm cannon blasting away at the apartment building and killing all who ran for cover; killing all who stood to fight.

Veronica screamed for Michael and he abandoned his post in the back hall, running to the front and firing into the small group that sought to take cover inside the shop, killing a few and fumbling to reload. The women were about to put the capsules back into their mouths when they heard again the staccato blast of a 40mm cannon and the screaming of Marines as they surged past the shop. They were driving the few remaining killers before them toward the end of the block, where the other EFV and two more Marine platoons were waiting to gun them down.

When the last barbarian fell, the Marines let out with a roaring “Oorah!” and the street fell strangely silent, save for the occasional coups de grace being delivered to a wounded, sneering cannibal.

In the light of a magnesium flare held high above her head, Emory came through the Marines with a medical bag over each shoulder, spotting at once the bright red, white, and blue patch of the Eighty-second Airborne Division on the arm of a dead soldier stuffed beneath the rusted hulk of a pickup truck. She ran toward it, grabbing the wrist and dragging the body out into the light.

Forrest’s lifeless body was covered in blood, his face lacerated and his uniform torn to tatters.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, taking a knee beside him as men of the Third Marines shuffled around her and into the porn shop, shouting for survivors. She heard the women screaming from within that they were alive, and a surge of excitement swept through the Marines.

“They’re alive!” someone shouted. “Get Beauchamp!”

“Corpsman!”

“Hey, Emory! They’re alive!”

With a heavy heart, Emory rose to her feet to go see who had made it.

“Fuck you goin’?”

She whipped her head around to see Forrest looking up at her through one very swollen eye. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Can’t you see I need a fuckin’ medic?”

“Corpsman!” ripped from her throat as she dropped to her knees, then tore into one of the med kits. “More corpsman up front!”

“Who taught you to take a pulse?” Forrest mumbled, head spinning, his body coming alive with pain.

“I didn’t bother taking your pulse,” she said, digging out the compression bandage she would have to apply to his leg to prevent him from bleeding to death. “You sure as fuck know how to play possum!”

“Good thing. Else one’a those damn jarheads may’ve shot my ass.”

“You’re probably gonna lose that foot,” she said, seeing that it was bent nearly forty-five degrees.

“Figures.”

Veronica was climbing out through the window of the shop now and screaming his name. “Jack! Jack!”

“Here!” Emory called.

“Oh, Christ,” he murmured. “Knock me out, Shannon. I can’t take her right now.”

Emory smiled and took a syrette of morphine from the pocket on her upper arm. “See how good I follow orders?” She stuck him in the leg, and he was unconscious by the time Veronica and Melissa and the dog came scrambling around the rear of the truck.

“Oh, my God!” Veronica shouted. “Is he alive?”

“Just a little banged up.”

“A little banged up!” She dropped to the ground beside them. “He looks like he’s been hit by a truck, Shannon!”

Emory looked up to see Melissa gripping Laddie’s leash in one hand and covering her mouth in abject terror with the other, the sight of Forrest’s wounds shattering her. She punched Veronica in the shoulder, pointed up at the girl and gave her a shove. “How about trying to help!”

“Oh!” Veronica shook off her own sense of shock and jumped up to grab Melissa into her arms. The girl stood bawling into her bosom as Laddie began to lick the blood from Forrest’s face.

Gunnery Sergeant Beauchamp appeared and stood looking down. “This one gonna make it, Emory?”

“He’ll make it, Gunny. We need to get him to the ship ASAP.”

“They got one bad wounded around the corner,” Beauchamp said. “Medevac’s loading him up now. Five dead.”

“Five?” The number had startled her.

“Two men, two women, and a boy,” he said, then walked off shouting orders to his men.

As Emory was finishing with Forrest’s IV a short time later, Marty squatted beside her on his haunches, face pale, eyes full of dread.

“No!” she said, realizing her fear had come to pass. “Don’t you fucking tell me that, Marty!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, starting to cry. “Sean said he probably saved a lot of lives. Maybe everyone’s.”

Her eyes filled with tears, making it hard to see what she was doing. A corpsman joined her and she asked him to finish for her and got to her feet. “Where is he?”

“In a… in a bag on the sidewalk around the corner.”

“Stay here.”

She walked off through the milling Marines and made her way to the front of the pharmacy, where she knelt beside the largest of the five dark forms on the sidewalk. Taking out her flashlight, she drew a breath then unzipped Sullivan’s bag. She saw his shattered face and for a moment was sick to her stomach, certain she was going throw up and shame herself, but then a Marine called her name and pulled her back from the brink: “Emory! What do you want done with your dead?”

“I… I… Can we take them aboard ship? Bury them at sea?”

“Don’t see why not,” the Marine said, stepping back from the doorway as they were bringing Ulrich out on a stretcher to load him onto the EFV medevac.

Erin and the baby came out right behind him. “Oh, my God, Shannon!” she called. “Thank God you made it, honey!”

Emory waved and smiled mirthlessly, it never occurring to her that the baby in Erin’s arms was her own daughter. She reached into the bag to take hold of Sullivan’s hand. It was cold and lifeless and did not feel anything at all like the soldier’s hand it had once been. “I loved you,” she whispered. “Not the way you wanted, but I loved you.”

She took one of his dog tags and sat there lost in thought until she heard the crunching of glass and looked up to see that the other bodies had already been loaded onto the deck of the EFV and the Marines were waiting for her. She tucked Sullivan’s arm back into the bag and zipped it up, then she got to her feet and stood away. “Gently, guys. Please?”

“Sure,” one of the Marines said, crouching at the foot of Sullivan’s bag as another grabbed the handles at the head.

Marty came up beside her and put his arm around her, and in return she slugged him. “Not in front of the Marines, you idiot!”

“Sorry,” he groaned, holding his ribs.

They watched until Sullivan was loaded and then walked around the corner, passing their snowcat on the way.

“The bastards must have taken Liddy and Natalie,” Marty said. “Their bodies are gone.”

“I hope they try eating them,” she muttered, feeling an emptiness she’d never known. “See how the bastards like cyanide poisoning.”

Sixty-Nine

The USS Boxer was now three days into her fourteen-day voyage back to Pearl Harbor. Forrest and his three wounded compatriots—Ulrich, Kane, and Danzig—all shared the same hospital bay, and though Ulrich had very nearly died of his gut wound, Dr. West and the Navy surgeon managed to repair the damage to his intestine. So far they were keeping septic infection at bay, and West was hopeful about Ulrich’s recovery. Forrest had only just managed to keep his foot, and the ankle would need to be operated on again once they arrived in Hawaii. His other many wounds were healing satisfactorily.

During the evenings, the curtains were pulled around their beds and their wives or sweethearts were permitted to spend the night at their sides if they so desired.

The unmarried women aboard had of course quickly become the belles of the ball, and by the end of their third day at sea, Captain Bisping felt it necessary to call a meeting with them in the pilots’ ready room.

“Ladies,” Bisping began, pulling the door to the room closed. “I understand that you have all been… alone for some time now, and I can appreciate what that must have been like for you. However, I must remind you that this is a warship and there are certain activities that are forbidden aboard a man-of-war—and all for very good reason.”

A few of the women snickered, and Bisping looked to Emory for help. “Am I not making myself clear?”

“In other words, guys, the captain doesn’t want anyone getting laid aboard his ship.” The women started to laugh. “How’s that, sir?”

“That’s fine, thank you,” Bisping said dryly. “So… if you ladies are unable to restrain yourselves for the remainder of the voyage, I will have to confine you to a smaller area of the ship, forbidding you to mingle with the crew. And this would be as much for your own safety as for any other reason.”

“Damn!” said Maria two. “All we did was trade one military dictator for another.”

Again the women started to laugh.

“Does that mean you cannot be trusted?” Bisping asked, cocking an authoritative eyebrow.

“They can be trusted,” Emory said, looking hard at the others. “He’s serious about confining us, you guys.”

The others rolled their eyes but no one made any argument.

“So are we all in agreement?” Bisping asked them.

“Yeesss,” they said in practiced unison.

“Thank you,” Bisping said with a smile. He left the room, but was not far down the passageway before he heard his name called.

“Captain Bisping?”

He turned to see Andie coming toward him. “Yes, ma’am?”

“We haven’t met formally,” she said, offering him her hand. “I’m Andie Tatum.”

“William Bisping,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Bisping is an English name, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, though my family’s lived in the States for generations.”

“You’ve been a Navy man all your life, I assume?”

“Yes, ma’am. Is there something I can do for you? I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a ship to run.”

Andie hesitated for a moment then thought, to hell with it. “I’ve noticed you don’t wear a wedding band, Captain, and I’ve been wondering whether there is anyone waiting for you back at Pearl?”

“Excuse me?” he said, startled.

“I apologize for being so forward. Especially after that, um, announcement you just made. It’s just that I’ve hesitated before and ended up wishing I hadn’t. Being lonely isn’t easy and it makes you do things you wouldn’t otherwise.”

Bisping swallowed. “Yes… I suppose it does. To tell you the truth, Andie, I haven’t really… Well, I lost my wife and two daughters to the asteroid. So, no, there’s no one waiting back at Pearl or anywhere else.”

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I lost my husband to the Taliban five years ago. Our daughter barely got to know him.”

“We seem to have some sad things in common.”

“They may not all be sad.”

“I’m sure they’re not, but I’m afraid I have a ship to run. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He turned and walked off down the passageway, leaving Andie watching after him, feeling like a complete fool, her self-esteem in a sudden tailspin. She thought of what her dead husband might think if he could see her at that moment and very nearly started to cry.

“You know what?” Bisping said, turning around and coming back down the passageway.

“What?” she said, swallowing and attempting to smile prettily.

“What’s wrong?” he said, seeing her eyes.

“Nothing. What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say that I was full of crap just now. There’s no reason we can’t have dinner in my cabin later if you think you might like to.”

“I’d love to,” she said, a warmth spreading through her.

“Perhaps you could bring your daughter?” he suggested.

“As a chaperone?” she asked with a smile.

“There are no secrets aboard a ship, Andie. And it’s important that I lead by example.”

“Of course.”

“I should also warn you, though… in case we find that we do have other things common. I’m the permanent captain of Boxer now, which means I’ll be at sea whenever she’s at sea, and I’ve got no idea how often that’s going to be. Particularly if there is more trouble with the Chinese. We sank three of their vessels on this cruise, and we have no idea how much of their navy is still active or what their intentions may be.”

“William, as long as this ship is the only woman I’d have to share you with, I’ll take my chances.”

“Very well, then. I’ll send someone for you after a while.”

“Looking forward to it,” she said with a smile.

Forrest sat holding Melissa’s hand, his head resting against the pillow, the curtain drawn around his bed. “So are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, giving her fingers a squeeze.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

She shook her head.

“Well, tell me what it is. You and I don’t have secrets from one another.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face toward the foot of the bed.

“Don’t hide your face. Talk to me.”

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Since when?”

She shook her head again, saying, “You’ll think I’m…”

“I’ll think you’re what?”

“Bad.”

“Oh, bullshit. Look at me… Look at me… There’s nothing you can do to make me think you’re bad. If you took a shit in church, I’d find a way to excuse it. And what’s worse than shitting in church?”

“Lots of things.”

“Well, nothing having to do with you. So tell me.”

“I’m jealous,” she softly, almost ashamedly, tears running down her face.

“Of Veronica?”

She closed her eyes and nodded, lowering her face to the mattress, and he let go of her hand, running his fingers through her curls, petting her. Melissa felt the heat spread through her, the body ache that she had never known until her feelings for him first began to change, making her feel dirty and ashamed.

“Why?” he asked her gently.

“Because I love you,” she said in a barely audible whisper.

“I love you too.”

But she shook her head, whispering into the sheet that it was not the same.

“How do you know?” he said softly, touching her face.

She sat up and looked at him.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think you understand what I mean.” She wiped her nose with her fingers.

“I understand exactly what you mean. Wanna run off and get married as soon as we get to Hawaii?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not like that… I can’t explain it.”

“Can I be honest with you?” he said, giving her hand another squeeze.

She nodded.

“You’re conflicted because there aren’t any young men around. When we get to Hawaii that will change, and that feeling you have won’t confuse you anymore.”

Her eyes grew big and she felt her face grow hot.

“See?” he said with a smile. “I know what you’re going through. And I’ve never pulled any punches with you, so I won’t start now. It’s completely natural, what you’re feeling. We just have to find you someone your own age to feel it for, that’s all.”

“And what if I don’t?” she said quietly, worried that Ulrich or one of the others might hear.

“Then I’ll dump Veronica,” he whispered, “and we’ll run away together up into the mountains and live in a hut.”

She snickered. “Nuh-uh.”

“Oh, don’t be too sure. She’ll be old and ugly pretty soon, and you’ll still be young and beautiful.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing softly. “You’re not going to tell her we had this talk, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Promise me.”

“I swear on my hope of being reborn a cat that I will never tell her we had this conversation.”

“You don’t want to come back as a cat!”

“I never told you that?”

“No,” she said. “Why the hell would you want to be a cat?”

“Have you ever seen a cat take any shit from anybody?”

“No,” she laughed.

“Well, next time around I ain’t takin’ no shit from nobody.”

She stood and slid her arms around his neck, then blushed and leaned over to kiss him chastely on the lips. “I love you, Jack.”

“Love you too, honey.”

When she was sure Melissa was gone, Veronica stepped out from behind Kane’s curtain and stood looking at Forrest. “It scares me how easily you handled that.”

“What was hard about it?” he said. “All I had to do was tell her the truth. And you know what they say about the truth.”

“Well, you’re committed to living in a hut if this doesn’t work.”

“Oh, stop it. She’ll have ten boyfriends by this time next month.”

Captain Bisping entered the sick bay a few moments later and stood outside Forrest’s curtain. “Knock, knock.”

“Come on in,” Forrest said.

Bisping pulled the curtain aside to see Veronica sitting on the edge of his bed. “I had to have a little talk with the single women in your crew.”

Forrest chuckled. “And how did that work out for ya, Captain?”

Bisping, feeling a little light-headed over Andie, smiled and said, “I’m guessing you’ve had your hands full these past eighteen months.”

“Women respond to kindness, Captain. Remember that.”

Veronica hit him in the head.

“Hey, I’m wounded, you know!”

“Not as bad as you’re gonna be.”

Bisping shook his head. “I’ve received word from Pearl. Our leadership is particularly concerned about the health of you and your men.”

“Well, that’s awfully nice of them, Captain.”

“Turns out,” Bisping went on, “that the four of you are going to be the only Green Berets of fighting age in all the Hawaiis.”

“Well, we’re retired.”

“No,” said Bisping, “I’m afraid you were retired. You see, everybody’s got a job to do in Hawaii these days, Captain. And President Thorn is going to be asking for your assistance with a little piracy problem we’ve been having. Our settlements along the coasts are being raided. Most people live in Honolulu now, but the settlements are important for protecting the infrastructure of the Islands for future repopulation. So the settlers are actually caretakers, and we need someone qualified to teach them how to defend themselves… and since the training of indigenous troops is a big part of what the Special Forces were all about… Well, it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

Forrest looked up at Veronica. “First cannibals and now pirates. Jesus Christ, you’d think I was a goddamn sailor.”

Epilogue

There were dozens of gulls in the sky as Marty Chittenden and Shannon Emory disembarked from the Boxer, walking the ladder leading down to the pier. They stood off to the side watching the birds for a long time, unable to take their eyes off them. The only other wild creatures they had seen in the last year were rats, and the sounds of the gulls were like sweet music.

“Nobody knows where the damn things came from,” said a voice from behind. “They just showed up one day.”

They turned around and there was Ester Thorn, bundled up in her coat and leaning against her cane.

“Holy shit,” Marty muttered, a grin coming to his face. “It’s really you!”

“Who is she?” Emory asked.

“It’s Ester,” he said, walking over to the old woman and giving her a hug.

“You look ten years older, boy. Turned you into a man, hasn’t it?”

“Not the kind of man I ever wanted to be,” he said, turning toward Emory. “Ester, this is someone I’d like you to meet. Shannon Emory. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had. We’ve been taking turns saving one another’s lives.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ester said, taking her hand. “Pretty thing.” Then she turned and gestured with her cane at all of the construction taking place around the harbor. “Take a look at the new power grid we’re building! It’ll be the most efficient grid there’s ever been. Of course, for now we remain largely dependent on the Navy’s nuclear reactors to pick up where the wind farms leave off, but it won’t always be that way. We’re harnessing the tide, Marty. Our engineers believe we’ll be drawing up to eighty percent of our power from the sea within the next five years. After that, who knows?

“Of course, I won’t be here to see it,” she added. “But you will, Marty, and don’t worry about a thing. Everyone in these islands knows who you are now, and they know they’ve got you to thank. I’ve made sure of it.”

“Ester, all I did was spot the rock.”

“No, son, you did a lot more than that. You got this grumpy old woman up off her ass and sent her to Hawaii to carry out your vision. Your vision, Marty. This sure as hell wasn’t mine. I would have said to hell with it all. And now, with a little honey here and a little honey there… you’ll keep the Naturalist Party in power for the next twenty or thirty years. The Federalists are growing weaker every day now.”

Marty laughed. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You will, son. You will. There’s a lot to do—a lot for you to live up to! This is your baby as much as it is mine, and now you’ll have to help me raise the damn thing. I didn’t turn the Navy around and give up one of my destroyers for you to sit on the beach and watch the lava cool.”

Emory chuckled and bumped Marty with her shoulder. “Told you,” she said. “There’s still a need for your skinny ass.”

“Captain Bisping!” Ester said suddenly, a scowl coming to her face the moment she spotted him coming through the crowd.

Bisping touched Andie’s arm and asked for her and Trinity to wait for him. “Madam President?”

“Captain Bisping, I’d like to know just who exactly that goddamn Christmas greeting was intended for!”

“Well, it was intended for you, Madam President,” he replied equably.

Ester laughed aloud and clapped him on the shoulder. “Old Longbottom thought it was meant for him!” she cackled, leaning heavily into her cane. “Boy, you should have seen the look on his face. He got so red I thought he was going to have himself an apoplexy. Honest to God! I told him, though. I said, ‘Oh, Admiral, don’t think so damn much of yourself! That message is meant as an affront to me. I’m the fool who sent him out there with only one escort! Not you!’

“I’ve apparently got a lot to learn about military matters, Captain, but you and I, we know how to talk to one another. There’s no messing about with you. We’ll get this fleet allocation business worked out in a way that we can all live with. Don’t you worry. You’re hugely popular now, Captain. A bona fide hero of the deep!”

By now Bisping was grinning, seeing easily into Ester’s political stratagem. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t suppose I can talk you into giving up the Boxer for a cabinet position, can I?”

“Madam President, I’d rather be keel-hauled.”

She cackled some more, saying, “Well, then I’ll get as much mileage out of you as I can whenever you’re ashore. How’s that?”

Then she took him aside, saying in a low voice for only him to hear: “Maybe you could suggest to the admiral that he send his requests through you in the future. It might keep things running a little more smoothly—provided he thinks it’s your idea.”

“Ester,” Bisping said, “suppose we let him think it’s his idea?”

She laughed and squeezed his hand. “We’re going to get along fine, Captain, you and me. Be sure to come by the hotel in the morning, will you? I’ve got a meeting with Longbottom about this supposed Chinese threat, and I want you there for it. I’m half worried he thinks we should invade.”

“The admiral may have some extreme ideas,” Bisping said, “but he knows the sea.”

“The sea!” Ester said, pointing at him. “He knows the sea, sure enough. But the man’s got no vision. We need people of vision in these islands. I keep saying it!”

She turned around and put her hand on Marty’s shoulder, dismissing Bisping almost out of hand. “Marty, I haven’t felt this good in years,” she said, taking his arm and leading him up the pier toward a waiting black limousine. “Now, I want you to come along with me. We’re meeting Harold Shipman over a late lunch—he’s the man who put me into office—and I don’t want you to worry about your friends. They’ll be fine. You’re all staying in my hotel for the first few weeks until we get the kinks ironed out. The people want to see you all and to get to know you. And I want you to tell me about these Green Beret friends of yours too. All of Honolulu’s talking about the five heroes who built some kind of an ark beneath the ground. It’s craziness, I know, but the people need heroes these days, Marty. They need the inspiration to keep them working!”

Marty looked back over his shoulder at Emory, shrugging in a gesture of helplessness.

Emory laughed and waived him goodbye as Ester pulled him into the backseat after her, still talking a mile a minute as Marty closed the door.