Dream Sky

35

“I see him. I see him,” Darshana said over the radio.

Sanjay looked west toward the building she was on, though he couldn’t see her from where he was. “What’s he doing?” he asked.

“Talking to another man. It looks like they are walking back to the car.”

“This other man, what does he look like?”

“Tall. Maybe forty. Short hair.”

“European or Indian?”

“European.”

Sanjay frowned. Not Director Mahajan. At least they still had eyes on van Assen.

“Kusum, are you ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” she responded.

Two hours earlier, van Assen had shown up at the survival station, alone in a car. Hopefully his next stop would be NB551. Sanjay and Kusum were both waiting on motorcycles, ready to take up pursuit.

“Van Assen’s getting in the car,” Darshana said.

“The other man going with him?”

“No. He’s alone.” Several seconds, then, “He’s leaving. Turning…east.”

Kusum’s route.

“I’ll catch up,” Sanjay said. He kicked his bike to life.

The people in America had called early that morning with the request for him and his friends to prepare to create some chaos in Jaipur. Since there were only the three of them, it was understood the chaos wouldn’t be much, but they were told whatever they could do would help.

To that end, the first thing they’d done that morning was locate a fireworks factory on the edge of town, where they obtained several small barrels of powder and reels of fuses. They hid the kegs around the perimeter of the station, ganging fuses so several could be lit at the same time. Darshana was staying behind so that if the call to act came while he and Kusum were following van Assen, Darshana could light them up. The makeshift bombs wouldn’t do much damage, but they would be unnerving.

Sanjay caught up to Kusum five minutes later on the street paralleling the one van Assen was using.

“Keep on him,” he told her over the radio. “Tell me every time he turns. I am going ahead.”

“To where?”

“I have an idea. Just do not lose him.”

Sanjay twisted the accelerator and raced away. He didn’t want to share his plan with her, knowing she would try to talk him out of it, but if it worked, they might be able to provide the Americans with more than the distraction from a few barrels of gunpowder.

Using Kusum’s directional information, he tried to stay at least two blocks ahead of van Assen. One time he screwed up and fell behind, but quickly made up the distance. Finally, when it seemed the Dutchman was going in one steady direction, Sanjay increased his distance to four blocks, then five, then six.

As they neared what appeared to be a warehouse district, he thought they must be getting close to van Assen’s destination, so he decreased his speed.

Two streets down and to the left, he saw it. Thankfully, it was far enough away that the guard at the gate didn’t see him. Even if there wasn’t a guard there, he would have pegged the place for a base. The array of satellite dishes and antennas on the roof was incongruous with the rest of the buildings in the area, and while the structure itself appeared appropriately worn, he would swear it was designed to look that way.

He turned the bike around. “Where are you?” he asked.

Kusum gave him a location that was only two and a half blocks away. He moved up to the end of the street and laid his bike down in the middle of the road, making it impossible to drive around it. Then he hid in the shadows of the building on the corner.

Twenty seconds later, van Assen’s car appeared on the road. When it neared the bike, it slowed. Van Assen had two choices: get out of the car to move the bike, or back up to use a different street. Sanjay wasn’t about to leave things to chance.

A second after the car stopped, he sprinted toward it, and was only a few meters away when the driver’s door started to open.

Perfect.

Sanjay leapt forward and grabbed the door. Van Assen yelped in surprise.

“Good morning, Mr. van Assen,” Sanjay said. “So nice to see you again.”

Lalo Vega silently worked his way around the Madrid survival station, checking on each of his people.

He sure as hell hoped this wouldn’t be for nothing. Putting all his people on the line like this felt like a disaster in the making. But the Resistance leadership back in America assured him his team wouldn’t be the only ones out tonight. It was a worldwide effort, they had said. The big push.

Despite his concerns, he put on a brave face as he made sure everyone was set.

“Any time now,” he told them. “Wait for my word.”

This was going to be something to see, Raheem Bahar thought with a smile. The Cairo survival station would not know what had hit them.

During the first days of the epidemic, Rahim and his people had cleaned out five army ammo depots, moving the munitions to a centralized location for later use.

When the request from Resistance headquarters had come through, he knew the time had come.

They had to temper their initial plan for fear of harming the survivors in the detention areas, but their effort would still pack more than a simple punch. Because Rahim had no intention of only putting a scare into Project Eden personnel at the station.

He and his people would destroy them.

“You going to be all right?” Pieter Dombrovsky asked.

Megan Zhang nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

Whether she would be or not didn’t matter. The call would come soon and they would go into action, despite her nerves.

She had always known that by joining the Resistance, there was a good chance she’d be involved in a mission like this. She had done what she could to lessen the potential trauma, and had volunteered for the Guangzhou contingent so that she wouldn’t be faced with seeing the death of anyone she knew back in Hong Kong.

Then stupid Pieter had volunteered to come with her. Now she had to worry about him.

She tightened her grip on her rifle, hoping to quell her shakes.

Pieter must have noticed, because he pried one of her hands loose and put it in his. “No one will see us up here,” he told her. “We’ll set off the charges, fire off a few shots, and before you know it, it’ll be over.”

Unable to help herself, she flung her hand around the back of his head and pulled his lips to hers, kissing him for the first time ever.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she whispered.

“I won’t if you won’t.”

“Deal.”

The choice of the location for the Tokyo survival station had been a poor one on Project Eden’s part. To be fair, it was impossible for anyone to know about all the tunnels that ran under the city, whether new or long abandoned.

It was one of the forgotten tunnels that would be the station’s downfall, at least if Toshiko Nagawa had anything to do with it. The tunnels allowed her team to get right under the facility and place remotely detonated explosives below the administration building.

Now all she had to do was press a button when the call came, then walk in and free the detainees.

As her college roommate back at Berkeley used to say: Done and done.

36

Celeste Johnson stood in the back of the comm room, eyes narrow. “Well?” she asked.

“Still nothing, ma’am,” the comm operator said.

Less than an hour earlier, they had received a message from the Los Angeles survival station that said a large number of survivors had shown up. L.A. was supposed to have reported in with a follow-up thirty minutes ago, but none had come, and all subsequent attempts to reach the station had gone unanswered.

Chicago was another matter altogether. While the station was still in contact with New York, it had been attacked in a coordinated effort to free a group of survivors scheduled for elimination. One of those in the attack had apparently been a Project Eden technician, a traitor within their organization. He was killed as he led the survivors out of the facility, but others on the outside had used explosives and gunfire to create diversions that allowed the prisoners to get away.

Of course, neither event was the first time a station had experienced difficulties. There had been minor flare-ups here and there, and, most spectacularly, the escape at the Mumbai station that had necessitated the closure of that facility.

Celeste was tempted to send out a general warning, but she wouldn’t allow herself to imagine either event as something significant. She decided that in the morning, she would send a team to Chicago to find the troublemakers and destroy them.

As for Los Angeles…

“Keep trying,” she instructed the operator.

37

“We have twenty-nine locations ready to go,” Crystal said over the phone. “A few won’t be much more than window dressing, but the others should more substantial. Just waiting for your go.”

“Very soon,” Ash said. “Don’t stray too far away.”

“Glued to my chair.”

Ash hung up and walked back over to the others. “So?”

Without looking back, Bobby Lion said, “Give me a few more seconds.”

They were in a hollow behind some rocks on a hill a quarter mile east of the town. Bobby and the people he’d arrived with had set up a monitoring station with four five-inch screens sitting on a crack in one of the boulders. They were being fed by cameras placed around the town, and all monitors were in night-vision mode.

Right around midnight, not long before Ash, Chloe, and their group had arrived, Bobby had spotted someone walking through the streets. At first he had thought it was one of the guards he’d already identified, but all four were still in place. He tracked the silhouette all the way to the location of guard number three, where some kind of conversation occurred. The new arrival apparently took over guard duty, while the man he replaced headed through town the way the other man had come.

Unfortunately, at that point, only four cameras had been up and running, and Bobby had lost the guard as the man reached the north end of the village. Since then, Bobby had been trying to figure out where the guy went. One of the team members had been sent out with a camera and was moving around the town at Bobby’s direction, trying to pick up the guard’s footprints in the snow.

When Ash had gone to take Crystal’s call, Bobby had traced the path through several streets but still had no end point.

“I need you to move fifty feet to your left,” Bobby said into his radio. “Then aim along that road leading out of town….Yeah, the one that dead-ends.”

Ash leaned over Bobby’s shoulder as the feed in monitor five repositioned. The road in question was a flat expanse covered with snow.

“Zoom in,” Bobby instructed. “Slowly. Eastern edge.”

The picture darkened as it pushed in, the tighter angle cutting down on the amount of ambient light the lens could pull in.

“Stop,” Bobby said. “There.” Bobby pointed at the monitor.

Along the edge of the road was a depression in the snow, almost a trough. It appeared to be…

“A path?” Ash asked.

Bobby grinned. “That’s what it looks like to me.” He switched back to his mic. “Marcos, you see that dark line on the edge of the road?…Right, that one. Follow it out. Let’s see where it goes.”

Omega Three walked over to his bag and pulled out his thermos of coffee. With a clear sky, the temperature was a lot lower than it had been in the last week, so staying warm was going to be a challenge. He really should have brought two thermoses. He’d have to remember that for tomorrow.

God, he hated the graveyard shift, he thought as he sipped some of the warm liquid.

The teams rotated on a weekly basis. Tonight was Omega team’s first night back on the eleven p.m. to seven a.m. shift. What he wouldn’t give to be in his bed, under his blankets, fast asleep. Maybe he should have done what Omega Two had done and feigned illness. Not that Omega Two wasn’t sick, but Omega Three couldn’t help but feel envious the guy had spent only an hour on duty.

Have to remember that trick.

He finished his coffee and pushed all thoughts of his bed out of his mind. It would only make him crazy.

His thermos back in the bag, he returned to his post, and once more took up scanning the ghost town below.

The group Wicks had been following was clearly not the Project Eden patrol he had thought it was.

Instead of entering the town, the group went around it, leaving behind what he’d discovered were cameras at strategic points, each covering a different portion of Everton. Leaving the cameras in place, he continued to follow the patrol to the eastern hill, where the team set up camp.

Then, within the last hour, the patrol had swelled in number with the arrival of a larger group. If not for the cameras, he might have thought these people were a band of survivors who’d come together and were looking for someplace safe to stay. If that had been the case, he would have moved on long ago. But they obviously weren’t simply a group of survivors, so he thought it best to figure out what they were up to, make sure they wouldn’t mess up his plans.

Very carefully, he worked his way through the trees so he could get close enough to their camp to hear what they were saying.

Chloe heard a subtle crush of snow. It had come from up the hill to the left.

She took a quick head count, thinking someone might have wandered off to take a leak, but everyone was there.

Another crush, slight and slow, like someone taking a long time to lower his or her foot.

As casually as possible, she moved behind the group, going right, away from the noise. After she was out of the hollow, she angled up the hill fifty feet before coming back across to the right. There she paused and scanned the hillside between her and the others.

It wasn’t long before she spotted the shadow among the trees, creeping downhill, right where she thought it would be.

Wicks stopped, knowing he had gone as far as he dared.

For several seconds there was silence. Perhaps they were whispering, in which case he wouldn’t be able to safely get close enough. Then a voice, not loud, but enough for him to hear.

“What is that?”

Another voice. “I don’t know. A storage building? Whatever it is, that’s where the trail leads.”

The third voice did not come from in front of him. It came from behind.

Right behind him.

“Don’t move.”

He could feel the breath of the words on the back of his neck. He wanted to turn and see who it was, but what did it matter? He was caught.

“On my command, you’ll stand up. Nice and slow. You try anything and my knife will cut through you before you realize it. Nod if you understand.”

Wicks nodded.

“Good. Up.”

He rose.

“Now walk forward.”

Ash heard a murmur from the back of the crowd and turned to see what was going on. Out of the trees, a man emerged with Chloe tailing him, holding a knife.

“What’s going on?” Ash asked.

“We have a visitor,” Chloe said. “He seemed very interested in what we were doing.”

The man appeared too old to be a sentry, but that could have been Ash’s bias. As Ash walked over, he couldn’t help but notice the man was staring at him, almost gawking.

“Who are you?” Ash asked.

The man didn’t appear to hear him. Chloe poked the tip of her knife into his back. He winced then blinked several times.

“I know you,” the man said, still looking at Ash.

“I don’t think so.”

“Las Cruces. You were there.”

Ash narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

“You were kneeling next to Matt. You were with him when he died. I saw you. You’re with the Resistance, aren’t you?”

Ash couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the man’s shirt and pulling him forward. “Who are you?”

“My…my name is Curtis. Curtis Wicks.”

“I don’t know you,” Ash said. “I’ve never seen you before. How do you know Matt?”

“He was my friend. He was…” The man was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you know my code name. Matt called me C8.”

Ash let go of the man’s shirt and took a step back.

“C8 died in the explosion at NB219,” he finally said.

“I didn’t. Obviously. Matt warned me about what was going to happen. I was up in the warehouse when the blast went off, and was able to get out before everything burned down.”

His anger growing, Ash said, “If you saw us, why didn’t you join us?”

The man looked as if he were searching for the right words, but ended up saying nothing.

“If you’re really C8,” Chloe said, “then you know why we’re here.”

“Matt told you, didn’t he?” the man said.

“Told us what?” Ash said.

The man looked from him to Chloe and back. “Dream Sky. It could be the only reason you’re here.”

The skin of Ash’s arms prickled.

“What is it?” Ash asked. “What is Dream Sky?”

Through trembling lips, the man said, “Everything.”

“That’s a little broad for my taste. What is it?”

The man stammered but made no answer.

“Whatever it is,” Chloe said, “once we destroy it, it’ll bring the Project down, won’t it?”

The man’s eyes widened. “You can’t destroy it!”

“Why not?” Ash said. “Isn’t that what Matt wanted to do?”

“No. He wanted to take it,” the man said. “You need it. We all need it if we’re going to start over. It’s a repository of irreplaceable knowledge!”

“Are you telling me it’s a library?” Ash asked.

“No. Not a library. People.”

38

After almost dying at the survival station, Belinda Ramsey is not sure if she and her fellow survivors should be trusting these people who found them not long after they went on the run, but there was little choice. She and the others were both physically and emotionally exhausted, and the promise to help them get far away from the Chicago survival station was all it took.

The bus is headed west to where they’ve been told other survivors are gathering. It sounds suspiciously like the safe zones the UN people, or whoever they were, talked about. But these new people have already treated Belinda’s group much better than the others back at the station. Food and clothes and medical attention have all been offered.

Belinda is hopeful and at the same time scared to hope.

The only thing she regrets about leaving the survival station is that her journal is still sitting on her bunk. She must have said something to someone about it, because when they take a break at a large truck stop, one of the new people brings her a pen and a blank diary from the store.

“In case you get the urge,” the woman says, placing it on the seat next to Belinda.

Belinda at first isn’t sure she’d ever have the urge to write again, but after a while on the road again, she realizes that’s not true. There is at least one thing she has to write.

She picks up the book, opens it to the first page, and begins:

Pax isn’t sure exactly what it is he’s feeling. Satisfaction for taking over the Los Angeles survival station? A bit. Relief that they were able to save Martina’s friends and the other detainees? Sure. Revulsion at what was done to the girl named Ruby? Absolutely. All these thoughts and more race through him, making it impossible for him to hold still for more than a moment.

The amazing thing is that the Campbell kid isn’t sick or dead. He appears completely unaffected by the virus, only agitated at being cooped up. Why the virus didn’t make him sick is something Pax will let others work out. For the moment, he’s strictly concerned with getting all possible intel out of the facility, then getting out of there before Project Eden sends people in to find out what happened.

As soon as he finishes searching the facility director’s office, he picks up his radio and says, “Finish up whatever you’re doing and get to the main entrance. This is the fifteen-minute warning.”

Martina will not leave Ben’s side. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, and appears just as glued to her. They are waiting in the back of one of the troop trucks at the stadium, told that after their rescuers finish what they’re doing at the station, they’ll head out. The rest of her friends are also in the truck, with the exception of Ruby, who is still in isolation. Martina was able to visit her before leaving and was happy to see her friend’s spirits were up and that she looked perfectly healthy.

Now, all the others are asking her questions about where she’s been and who their saviors are.

She answers as best as she can.

Then Jilly asks, “What about Noreen and Riley and Craig? Where are they?”

Until that moment, Martina was pretty sure she’s never been happier, but the mention of her missing friends dampens her mood. It’s her fault they’re not here. She raced off, focused solely on Ben’s Jeep, and lost them.

“We’ll find them,” she says. “Tomorrow, first thing.”

Ben squeezes her hand. “Absolutely.”

Noreen isn’t sure if Craig is dead or only unconscious. If she could check, she would, but her hands are bound behind her and tied to a pipe running up the wall of the mostly empty room. Craig is slumped to the side ten feet away, similarly bound to another pipe. She watches his chest to see if he’s breathing, but in the dim light it’s hard to tell.

Where Riley is, she has no idea. It was Riley’s turn to gather food for dinner, so she wasn’t there when the men they saw in Cambria returned and sneaked up on them. Thankfully, Riley took her motorcycle with her. Otherwise the men wouldn’t stop looking until they find out who it belongs to.

Noreen doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she’s sure it won’t be good.

“Craig,” she whispers for about the millionth time. “Craig, can you hear me?”

Robert and Estella have been given their assignment. They wait with four others in the trees at the western edge of town. They can’t see the guard with whom they’re supposed to make contact, but they know where he is.

The only question Robert has is, will the guard shoot first or wait until it’s too late?

It’s a huge risk, but no bigger than some of the stunts he’s pulled lately.

At least that’s what he tells himself.

Kusum sits behind the wheel of the car. Sanjay and van Assen sit in back.

When Sanjay confronted him at the makeshift roadblock, van Assen tried to grab Sanjay, probably intending to knock Sanjay’s head into the car. Sanjay batted away van Assen’s hands and kneed him in the gut.

Now, as they sit in the backseat, van Assen lunges at Sanjay as Sanjay is talking to Kusum. The Dutchman is able to get in a few jabs, but fails at wrestling away the gun Sanjay procured from the trunk of the vehicle. Sanjay slaps the weapon against the side of the man’s head, causing a trickle of blood to run from his ear.

If the man tries anything again, Sanjay is prepared to shoot him, first in the foot, then, if necessary, the knee, and then the hip. He doesn’t think pulling the trigger will be needed, though. He is pretty sure van Assen has received the message, but Sanjay will stay vigilant nonetheless.

After he resumes his conversation with Kusum, he glances occasionally at the sat phone sitting in the front passenger seat, knowing that at any moment, the call will come.

Rachel puts a supportive hand on Crystal’s back. “You doing all right?”

“Fine,” the girl says.

“And we’re all set?”

“As set as we can be.”

Rachel smiles. “Good.”

She knows the girl, like most of the others present, is running on adrenaline, having already put in more than twenty hours straight. Soon Crystal can rest, but not yet. There is still work to do tonight.

Help me give them strength, Rachel thinks, hoping somewhere her brother hears her.

She is still shattered by his absence, but she’s learning to cope with it, if barely.

She walks over to Leon and puts the same hand on him. “Hanging in there?”

Celeste Johnson’s annoyance is growing with every minute the Los Angeles survival station remains silent. She decides to dispatch a squad from the Bay Area to get eyes on the ground, and is told they will arrive within ninety minutes.

With nothing else to do and the hour growing extremely late, she decides the best thing she can do now is get some sleep.

Ash eyes the concrete building in the middle of the snow-covered field. So unassuming, so easy to dismiss.

C8 has confirmed it’s the entrance to the facility.

To Dream Sky.

Ash looks over at Powell and whispers, “Are we all in position?”

“Yes, sir,” the man responds.

Ash turns to Chloe and notices a far-off look on her face. “You okay?”

She jerks a little in surprise and then tries to smile. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good. It’s just…”

“What?” he asks.

“I feel like I’ve been here before.”

Ash waits, but nothing else comes. “You want to sit this one out?” he asks.

A sneer leaps onto her face. “No way.”

That’s good enough for him. He reaches into this coat pocket, pulls out the sat phone. The number for Ward Mountain is waiting for him on the screen.

He looks again to Powell. “Group one, go.”

As Powell raises his radio to his mouth, Ash moves his thumb over the SEND button.

It’s time.