Ghost Country

Chapter Forty-Three

They were in the air thirty minutes later. Travis's F-15E was the third off the runway. Its wheels left the ground and a second later Travis felt like he was lying on his back, and that he weighed about five hundred pounds. There were four green-screen displays in front of him, left to right in a row. They were full of visual data and numbers, most of which he couldn't make sense of. One he could: altitude. That number was climbing rapidly.

The fighter leveled off at thirty thousand feet. Travis looked to his left and right, and saw the southern coastline of Long Island passing far below. A continuous vein of light reached west to the bright sprawl of New York City, then snaked away down the seaboard into the hazy summer darkness.

Travis saw the light-points of the first two jets' engines ahead. A moment later his plane caught up and settled into a line beside them. Over the next three minutes the remaining five aircraft joined the formation, and then Travis felt the lying-on-his-back sensation again, not because of a climb but simply due to acceleration. All eight fighters were ramping up to nearly their maximum cruise speed, which was more than three times as fast as whatever kind of private jet Finn was traveling in. Travis had already done the math. Even with Finn's ninety-minute head start, the eight of them were going to beat him to Arica by almost four hours. It was enough to make Travis regret the fifteen years he hadn't been a taxpayer.

The force pushing him into his seatback receded as the jet's speed topped out. He stared at the coastline again, already falling far behind. He looked at Manhattan and thought of Paige and Bethany, huddling in the darkened ruins of the place. It was hard to imagine that they could be holding on to even a strand of hope. T ravis watched the black nothingness of the Atlantic for a long time. He felt tiredness steal over him. He closed his eyes for what seemed to be a minute or two, and woke to the sound of the jet's engines whining, their power level rising and falling from one second to the next. He looked up, and through the instrument glare on the curved canopy, he saw the shape of a massive four-engine aircraft above and just ahead of the F-15E. He saw a refueling boom coming down, little airfoils near its tip keeping it roughly stable.

Travis leaned a few inches to the side, looked past the front seat and saw the pilot's hand making feather adjustments on the stick, steady but tense.

"How many times do you have to do something like this before you're comfortable at it?" Travis said.

"I'll let you know if I ever get there," the pilot said.

It didn't sound like sarcasm. Travis decided not to distract the guy with any more questions. T hey reached Arica half an hour before sunrise. From above, the city was a broad crescent of light hugging an inward curve of the sea. Travis could get no sense of the desert except its emptiness-the landscape was black and formless under the deep red sky.

The fighters touched down, offloaded their passengers and were gone again within a few minutes.

A number of airport security officials, as well as local and Chilean federal police, were waiting. Garner spoke to them alone for ten minutes, while Travis sat aside with the agents. He watched Garner make his case. No doubt it was a fairly big deal to land in someone's country and ask permission to personally detain the passenger of an incoming private jet-and to request that it all be kept secret. Travis wondered how many people of lesser clout than a former American president could've pulled it off. T hey sat in the lounge overlooking the tarmac. They waited. Garner called his brother and got an update from satellite and ground-based tracking stations monitoring Finn's aircraft. It was right on schedule.

From the airport lounge Travis could see the city in one direction and the desert in the other. Arica was a beautiful place. In the predawn its structures stood silhouetted against the pink ocean. Most of its streetlamps were still on, their light softened by the breaking day. Toward the south end of the city's shoreline, a giant stone formation punched up out of the ground, shaped like an overturned ship's hull. It was at least four hundred feet high.

Then there was the desert. Which was simply empty. It stretched away south and slightly east of town, hemmed in by shallow rises of the land on both sides-these too were empty. There was just nothing out there past the city's edge. Not so much as a lonely weed.

The sun came up and the sky went pale blue. There wasn't a trace of cloud in it, in any direction. Travis wondered if there ever was. F inn's plane was on approach. Two minutes out. Travis was standing in the dim interior of a mechanical room, just inside a door that accessed the tarmac.

He was holding an HK MP7 that'd been provided by airport security. So were the Secret Service agents. Garner had one too, but at the agents' insistence he wasn't going to participate in the action. He seemed annoyed about it, but only a little. Travis guessed that he'd only agreed because he didn't expect much action. As far as anyone could tell, Finn was traveling alone. Even if he did have security with him, a light business jet couldn't hold enough people to counter the strength that was waiting here. In addition to Travis and the agents, the local and federal police had dozens of armed officers concealed among the airport's structures. Garner had thoroughly convinced them that Isaac Finn was not someone they wanted on their soil.

Someone in the tower spoke over an intercom. "Ninety seconds."

Travis glanced at Garner in the vague light. "The police are clear that we're taking point on this, right?"

Garner nodded. "The way we're doing this, they'd prefer their people not become involved at all, beyond providing a show of force. Makes it easier to pretend it never happened."

"All I care about is making sure no one shoots at the plane while the cylinder's inside," Travis said. "It'd be the same as opening fire while Paige and Bethany were in there."

Garner took his point. "Should be no need for any of that. Just let him open the door and exit the plane, and then move on him. He's not prepared for it. What can he do?"

Travis didn't answer. He wasn't ready to relax even that much. He looked through the two-inch crack in the door. He could see most of the runway and the swath of sky through which Finn's plane would descend.

Then he saw the plane. First a glint and then a distinct shape. A speck of a fuselage flanked by jet engines.

Nearer, he could see the idling maintenance trucks that would pull out and block the runway at its midpoint, once Finn had disembarked from the aircraft.

The plane's details resolved by the second. Travis saw the landing gear swing down and lock when it was thirty seconds out.

There was only the faintest bark as its wheels touched the runway. It settled onto its nose gear. The engines' thrust reversers deployed, and a moment later the aircraft was rolling slowly to a stop. It halted forty yards from where Travis was standing behind the door.

And then the maintenance vehicles moved. One went first. The rest hesitated a few seconds and then followed.

"Goddammit," Travis said. "It's too soon."

He heard Garner breathe out slowly behind him, sharing the sentiment.

Then the jet did exactly what Travis expected it to do: it began to turn in place. He guessed the reason was nothing more than a courtesy to its passenger: the plane's door was on the side opposite the terminal building. The turnaround would correct that.

The plane was most of the way through its half-rotation when it suddenly stopped. Travis had just enough of a viewing angle on the pilots to see that they'd spotted the maintenance trucks. They seemed thrown. They traded looks. Their mouths moved.

"Fuck," Travis said.

He could picture Finn at the back of the little plane, looking up sharply at what the pilots were saying. Putting it together, just like that.

For the longest time nothing happened. The pilots were still talking, looking from each other to the vehicles. If Finn was asking them to take off again, it was in vain. No way could the jet get up to speed in the distance available. Even the taxilane was blocked now.

Travis guessed that a minute had passed since the plane had stopped turning. Maybe it'd been longer.

Then both pilots looked behind them into the cabin and flinched at something. They tore their headsets off and came up out of their seats. In almost the same instant, Travis saw smoke begin to curl into the cockpit along the ceiling.

"What the hell?" Garner said. "Is he committing suicide?"

And then Travis understood. "Oh shit."

Half a second later the plane's door opened. It started to ease down on its friction-hinges, and then the pilots pushed it violently from the inside, and climbed out past it.

Travis was already running. He'd shoved open the door of the mechanical room. He was sprinting as hard as he could over the tarmac, MP7 in hand. The pilots saw him coming and froze for a second, their eyes on the gun. Then they broke to the left, getting the hell away from both Travis and the plane.

The smoke was rolling out from under the top of the doorway, thick and black. The door had fallen fully open by now, its stair steps resting level. Travis could see the light of flames playing over the aircraft's interior.

He covered the last few yards and vaulted up and over the stairs. Tucked in his arms, ducked and landed on his feet inside the plane, his shoulder slamming against the opposite sidewall.

Everything aft of the cockpit was burning. Travis saw broken liquor bottles everywhere. The fire had spread from their spilled contents up the sides of the leather seats, igniting the foam within. The smoke was thickening by the second.

Finn wasn't inside. Travis hadn't expected him to be. All that was there was what Travis had expected.

The iris. Hovering by itself, detached, just shy of the cabin's back wall ten or twelve feet away. Through the smoke, Travis could see nothing beyond the iris but harsh sunlight, exactly the way it shone in the present Arica. Finn had already gone through.

How long had the iris been open?

If Finn had detached it right after the plane stopped its turn, the thing could contract shut any second now.

What would happen if a person were halfway through the opening when it closed? Something told Travis the iris didn't have the kind of safety features found in elevator doors.

He lunged forward. Into the smoke. Past the flames. Threw his arms ahead of him, the MP7 still in his right hand, and dived.

He passed through the open circle into bright light. He felt the iris's edges draw sharply inward and slam against one of his shins, and then he was through, both feet clearing the margin. He saw the ground coming up beneath him-not the runway blacktop that'd been there in the present, but a gridwork of paver stones. He kept hold of the gun with one hand, and threw the other downward to break his fall. He hit hard, took half the impact with his hand, then tucked and rolled to let his shoulder take the rest. The move wasn't graceful, but it worked. He ended up on his back, the MP7 slamming hard onto the pavers but not discharging. Still gripping it, he pitched himself sideways and got up into a crouch, eyes everywhere for any sign of Finn.

But he couldn't see anything. The air was thick with black smoke from the just-closed iris. He could make out low, boxy shapes here and there, ten to twenty feet away in several directions. Waist high, they caught the wind and made it swirl, trapping and churning the smoke.

Travis took a step and heard his foot kick something tiny and metallic. It skipped away over the pavers before he could get a look at it, but he knew by the sound what it was: a bullet cartridge. He glanced down and saw two more beneath him. He stooped and picked one up. Thirty-eight caliber. He pictured Finn, sometime in the last ninety seconds, fumbling rounds into a revolver on this very spot.

He scanned his surroundings again. Still no sign of Finn, but the smoke was already thinner. The box shapes were resolving. He could see now that they were made of concrete, and were open on top. They were half filled with dirt-planter boxes of some kind, but there was nothing growing in them.

He couldn't stay here in the open any longer. He chose a planter at random and sprinted for it, MP7 leveled in case Finn was already hiding there. He passed the first corner: nothing but open space beyond it. He ducked low and made his way down the box's length, and took the next corner without pause. That side was empty too.

He advanced on the last obscured face. The smoke was thinning by the second. This kind of cat-and-mouse stuff was all luck when it was one-on-one. A team of four people or more could use tactics, cover each other's backs, but between single opponents it was almost purely random. Finn would be around this next corner or he wouldn't. If there, he'd be facing away or he wouldn't.

Travis took the corner.

Finn was there, crouched five feet away, his pistol aimed straight back at Travis.

For three seconds neither made a move.

The cylinder lay at Finn's feet, safely out of the crossfire; Travis saw it without breaking eye contact.

Travis considered the situation. He could pull the trigger on the guy right now and probably resolve the whole thing. The risk was that, even with half the guy's head missing, motor reflex could still fire the.38-and probably hit the target, at this range. Travis thought he'd probably take the risk, if it were just his own life on the line. But it wasn't.

"The two women who were with me in New York," Travis said. "They're still there. They're stuck in the ruins." He indicated the cylinder with his eyes. "I need that to get them back. I'm not leaving here without it."

Finn's gun hand remained steady. "That's not going to happen. If you take this, Garner can still stop me."

"Garner's stopping you as we speak. He knows about Longbow. He knows you're activating the satellites. He's on the phone right now setting up raids at all their corporate properties. I imagine one of them will net Audra."

Each piece of information seemed to rattle the man more deeply, though Travis thought his reaction was missing something. It looked like unwilling acceptance where surprise might have been.

"You had to know it was over," Travis said. "From the moment Paige slapped Garner last night, you were never going to pull it off."

Finn shook his head. He took the cylinder in his free hand and moved back two feet, rising to full height as he did. The.38 stayed level.

Travis stood upright, too. He felt sunlight begin burning his neck through the dissipating smoke. Visibility was better: it was like standing in a thin fog, though the light glared through it everywhere. Travis still couldn't see beyond the nearest forty feet of paver stones and planter boxes. This place seemed to be a plaza of some kind, where the airport had been in the present.

Finn's eyes narrowed. They didn't quite leave Travis, but they moved a little, like the man was reading a list of options in his own head. Looking for some way to salvage his plans. He took another step back. Nine or ten feet away now. Travis saw the risk of getting hit by a reflexive shot begin to drop. He kept the MP7 sighted for a head shot.

"I'm sorry about your friends," Finn said. "I mean that. But I can't just let you take this thing."

He retreated a step further. Maybe he thought he could make a run for it. Put some distance behind him and cross back into the present, somewhere else in Arica. Then try to call Audra and warn her.

The MP7 required four ounces of trigger pressure to fire. Travis applied two.

Finn backed up again.

And then the wind shifted.

Whichever way it'd been blowing before, the boxes in the plaza had spun it in circles. Now it came on dead straight from behind Travis, its speed seeming to double, and in the span of five seconds the smoke drew away like a veil.

Finn took a sharp breath.

Travis felt his own eyes widen involuntarily.

They might as well have been standing in Midtown Manhattan. The Arica they'd seen in the present was long gone, and in its place reared a skyline of concrete and glass and steel, some of its towers standing to a height of seventy stories or more. Broad avenues crisscrossed at their bases, complete with traffic lights and crisp white lines. Along the length of the nearest street, Travis could see the downtown district snaking up the coast for over a mile, and the height and density of the structures held consistent for most of that distance.

None of it lay in ruins. The skyscrapers' glass faces looked like they'd been washed yesterday. The sidewalks were immaculate. Vehicles stood parked at curbsides, 2011 models or earlier as far as Travis could tell. Wooden benches framed the plaza, their green paint gleaming in the desert sun.

Yet nothing moved. Beyond the filled parking spaces, the streets were deserted. Through ground-level windows, every visible lobby sat vacant. The traffic lights were dark. The tires of every vehicle were flat and beginning to crumble. Arica was imposing and beautiful and pristine, but it was also abandoned. For how long, Travis couldn't guess.

"It worked," Finn said. He looked around at the place while keeping the gun on Travis. "The survivors flourished here. They made it."

"For a while. What does it matter? They're dead now."

"We don't know they're dead. We don't know what happened here."

"Couldn't have been good."

Finn looked at him. Some kind of new hope flickered in his eyes. "It's enough that it worked at all. And if I search this place for even a few hours, I can probably find out what happened to it. Find out how to avoid the problem."

"We could've found this place bustling and it still wouldn't be worth killing the world for it," Travis said.

"The world's going to kill itself sooner or later. Why shouldn't at least some of us live?"

"Neither of us is going to convince the other. If you want to stay here, feel free. But I'm taking the cylinder with me. I'm going to New York to get my friends."

"You're not," Finn said. "I really am sorry, but you're not. You don't have time, anyway. Look."

He held the cylinder toward Travis, showing him the side opposite the row of buttons. In the harsh light it took Travis a few seconds to see what the man was talking about.

Along part of the casing's length ran a line of blue lights, pencil-eraser-sized and spaced at centimeter intervals. They shone softly and diffused from just beneath the black surface, and extended to a little over a third of the cylinder's long dimension.

"They appeared last night," Finn said. "Right after your friends broke the other cylinder. At that time the lights covered the whole length, but they've been disappearing steadily since, like a countdown. Whoever built these things must not have wanted anyone using one without the other. My guess is, when the last one of these lights goes out, this thing becomes a paperweight."

Travis's mind was already doing the math. The other cylinder had broken maybe nine hours ago. If that amount of time had burned not-quite-two-thirds of the countdown, he had something like five hours left.

Five hours to reach New York and find Paige and Bethany.

He thought of flight time, and search time, and shit-happens time. Five hours. Was it even close to enough?

"You're wasting your time thinking about it," Finn said. "I'm not giving this to you. Not now that I've seen this place." The man took another step back. "I'm sorry," he repeated.

"So am I," Travis said, and pulled the trigger the rest of the way.

Nothing happened.