Plague War

28

Leadville command had known all along. Ruth should have guessed. James had not been among her counterparts on the radio, advising and encouraging her. Delaying her. He wasn’t knowledgeable about their hunter-killer tech or familiar in any way with laser fabrication, but as the head of their labs, he should have been in the background.

James’s absence itself was the warning that Leadville had tried to prevent him from giving, and Ruth had been too caught up in her work to understand. It might have cost them everything.

Young was right. They should have run for the plane.

Were their suits bugged? No, microdevices couldn’t transmit that far. Hernandez had said something, an innocent-sounding phrase, preset signals for degrees of trouble.

“Young?” Ruth waved her palm back and forth against the glass wall of the chamber. “Young! You cut the radio relay!”

Slightly to her left, outside the glass, Young turned.

“Let me talk to them,” she said.

“I’ve got it covered, Doc. Move your ass.”

Cam was already rolling Sawyer through the air lock, pushing Sawyer’s arm down as he grabbed at the wall.

Ruth said, “Listen to me. We have the ultimate hostage.”

“No kidding.” Young shook his head, not in disagreement but in harried exasperation. “Iantuano, clear them out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait!” Ruth slapped at the glass but Captain Young had already started toward the far corner of the main room, where his prisoners sat against the wall, their boots and wrists bound with silver duct tape.

He’d sworn he would slaughter them—

“Young, no! I meant the nanos and all the hardware!”

He didn’t answer. He’d switched off the general frequency. What channel had Olson used? Ruth grabbed at her controls. Static. Static. Band two was the command channel, and the pilots across town had kept this relay open:

“—down now, stand down and surrender your weapons to Major Hernandez.” The voice from Leadville was a woman’s, cool, inflectionless. “There’s no reason for more bloodshed.”

“And I’m telling you.” That was Young. “Back off.”

“Stand down, Captain.”

“Back off. We’ll blow it all up first. Understand? We’ve got enough gas cans here to have a real party, so back off. You don’t want to—”

The sky hammered against the building in two screaming sonic waves as the F-15 Eagles cut overhead.

* * * *

Leadville had sent an overwhelming force. That was what they claimed, at least, and the pilots across town confirmed that radar showed another C-130 lumbering after the two fighter jets. Leadville boasted that it held sixty troops.

Young repeated his only threat—“We’ll blow it up, all of it!”—then instructed the pilots to cut the relay entirely. He said, “Can you block our stretch of highway, put your planes in the middle?”

“Already moving.” The USAF man did not call Young sir or captain, Ruth noticed. Was that significant?

The next nearest landing space was the Sacramento city executive airport, five miles south from where they’d touched down, and the roads between were jammed with stalls — and it would be another fifteen minutes before the Leadville plane covered the distance from the Sierras, another ten or more before they were on the ground.

“We’ll be most of the way back before they even set their brakes,” Young said.

* * * *

But Ruth wondered. Even if they weren’t captured on the ground, even if the breakaways mustered air support or if Canadian fighters intervened on their behalf, would Leadville permit anyone else to keep the archos tech? Men driven by greed and fear might not understand that spin-off nano types could be to their benefit as well. Men fixated on war might disbelieve that a vaccine nano would also save them.

One air-to-air missile, that was all Leadville needed to erase a slow-moving cargo plane forever.

* * * *

“No!” Ruth tottered back from Iantuano, struggling ineffectively with her single arm. “Not yet! If we don’t have this we have nothing—”

He caught her wrist. “Are you crazy? We have to move.”

“I’m done, I’m done, I’m wrapping up,” D.J. yammered behind her and Ruth shifted back and forth, trying to be larger, trying to block Iantuano from the EUVL console.

“Let us secure our prototype or all this time was wasted!”

“Ma’am, we’re moving out.”

“I’ll go,” Todd said. “Sir? Look, I’m going.”

“Got it!” D.J. shouted. “Let me extract—”

Thump bump. Captain Young had come back to the outside of the chamber, his rifle cradled in one arm, his other hand on the glass. At the same time, two soldiers were hustling in through the air lock. Cam had already pushed Sawyer’s wheelchair across the larger room, his head turned over his shoulder to watch.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were playing both sides,” Young said, looking for Ruth’s eyes through the many layers between them, the glass wall, their faceplates.

She held his gaze. “That’s ridiculous.”

D.J. stepped to her side and showed Young his fist. “I have it, okay? I have our sample. Let us make sure we’ve got all the software and we can go.”

“Do it fast,” Young said, making a rolling gesture like a traffic cop. “I want to bring that laser but you’re in our way.”

The soldiers who’d come into the chamber were pulling a dolly. None of the EUVL components weighed more than two hundred pounds, but the soldiers also had a stubby blue cylinder, not an air tank, connected by a coil of line to a slender, blackened nozzle. The welding torch.

Ruth said, “You have to be careful how you take it apart!”

“Doc, anything that’s not on our trailer in fifteen minutes gets left here.”

“You can’t just cut the cooling lines, we’ll never fix—”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“I can minimize the damage,” D.J. said. “Let me show them where to cut and I’ll pull as much wiring as I can.”

“Sure,” Young answered. Already one soldier was helping the other, Dansfield, fit a heavy welder’s mask over his helmet.

Ruth hesitated, arguments swarming her brain. The third component — the power supply and computerized electronics— was tied to the others only by a bevy of cables, easily yanked. Unfortunately the second unit — cooling system, fans and filters — was connected to the first by several heavy-duty pipes. If they hacked through those lines, they would lose most of the coolant and badly contaminate the decon system. But better that, she supposed, than to risk damaging the laser optics in the first component by smashing the bolts free.

She seized her laptop. Todd was gathering up the CD-RWs and D.J. had zipped the case of vacuum wafers into his chest pocket. Ruth bustled into the air lock, Todd close behind.

There were still so many tests and refinements necessary before they had a dependable vaccine, more than anyone ever could have accomplished within the limits of their air supply.

They’d probably run through the whole process fifty times. They needed days, even weeks, and she closed her eyes and cursed herself.

The rationale for preliminary checks had been sound, but they should have stopped as soon as they were sure they had the essentials. Maybe they could have finished refueling at Sacramento International before the jets rose over the horizon.

Ruth had honestly thought she was beyond pride, beyond anticipating her place in history — yet the temptation to be first had been too great. Temptation and weakness.

She’d never completely escaped her fear as they worked— there were too many reminders, the clinging skin of her suit, the weight of her pack and the cramping discomfort in her shoulder — but she had used her diaper standing right there among five men and thought little of it, spellbound, possessed.

Now she prayed to God that there would be a place and time for her to lose herself again. Not for her own sake. Not ever again for her. The millions of people left in the world didn’t deserve to starve and fight through the next thousand years because of her selfishness. Shouldn’t that count for something?

Please please please. The litany was her heartbeat.

“This is Dansfield, I’m lighting up—”

She looked back. Stupid. Three of the four men behind her in the hermetic chamber had turned outward, and she saw Iantuano’s lips part in surprise at her reaction. Then her gaze shifted naturally to the fourth man, a kneeling shape, just as the welding torch in his hands spat out a holy blue-white flame. She flinched.

Please God.

Afterimages clung to her eyes. “Todd,” she said, “will you double-check the trailer? I’m going to look over what’s left in here and then we can triple-up on each other, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“Let me help.” That was Cam, jacking his radio back in without permission. Ruth paused, afraid for him, but surely Young wouldn’t object now that Leadville knew everything.

His scarred, broad features had swollen between his nose and mouth, though the extent of it was tough to judge because the interior of his faceplate was flecked with dry blood, thickest over the bottom half. Beside Cam, low in the wheelchair, Sawyer blinked up at her with a frightened chimpanzee grimace. No doubt he’d also looked at the welding torch.

“Why don’t you give that guy a hand?” she asked, motioning outside the lab where a soldier was lashing equipment onto the trailer. “We can’t afford for anything to fall off.”

“Right.” Cam turned and trotted after Todd, leaving Sawyer in the middle of the floor.

Ruth strode alongside the counter, regarding the jumble. If there was room, if they had a fleet of trucks, they would leave nothing except the chairs and desk lamps. But other items didn’t matter, picoammeters, a signal generator—

She was standing in Corporal Ruggiero’s blood.

She clenched her fist and kept moving, although she angled back from the counter to walk on clean tile. Then her gaze lowered again with the same reflex curiosity that had nearly blinded her.

The puddle had smeared when they dragged Ruggiero from the room, a broad trail now turning black and sticky.

Captain Young was in the far corner again, where he’d gone after each interruption, standing over the prisoners with another Special Forces soldier as a third man wrapped more tape around the prisoners’ legs. They were already immobilized. Why bother?

Ruth fumbled for her radio control, careful not to drop her laptop and unwilling to set it down.

“—or own fault. Otherwise you’d be riding back with us.”

“You can’t just leave us here.” Hernandez. They must have plugged his radio in.

“I can’t bother keeping an eye on you or messing around with an extra vehicle,” Young told him. “I’m sorry. We’ll tell them where to find you.”

“What if they don’t get here in time?”

“You have almost two hours. And you can survive for almost two more after that before you really start to hurt.”

“Not if we suffocate in these suits.”

“We’ll leave you a knife,” Young said. “You should be able to get everybody up and moving in ten, fifteen minutes.”

Longer than that. But Ruth didn’t say it. The Marines would need to be very cautious to avoid cutting open their suits, and now she realized why the soldier with the tape was looping it around their shins and knees instead of reinforcing the bonds at their feet. More surface area meant more exacting surgery.

“Wait.” Hernandez spoke faster now. “You know Timberline has the best chance at putting together a bug that really works. If you take this technology to the breakaways—”

“Good-bye, Major. Good luck.”

“—you’re playing with more lives than you—”

Young knelt and yanked Hernandez’s jack himself, as the soldier with the tape leaned over. He also held a folding knife. They cut Hernandez’s wire and then did the same to the other three Marines, irreparably muting them.

It was a mercy, giving Hernandez and his squad a chance, and it was smart. Ruth approved. If Young had executed them, he couldn’t expect any better for himself if things went bad.

Leaving them here to be rescued was also, she thought, a calculated move to draw away some of Leadville’s forces.

* * * *

More than fifteen minutes passed before they were driving — the EUVL components barely fit through the air lock one at a time — but Young held up until the last piece was aboard the trailer.

Their shadows were small and huddled beneath them, the noon sun suspended near its highest point.

Dansfield led off in the ’dozer, Trotter kneeling on the roof on the operator’s cage with one of their two assault rifles, and Olson stood behind him on the bulldozer’s body. The five civilians and four remaining Special Forces crammed into the jeep and among the tightly packed gear on the flatbed, Sawyer and his wheelchair wedged into the back. Iantuano sat on top of an EUVL component with the second rifle.

Newcombe had disabled the pickup with three pistol shots, both driver-side tires, the radiator. They’d also dumped most of the equipment they’d brought here, keeping the remaining air tanks and the pressure hood — and Ruth noted that among the abandoned gear were the gas cans Young had sworn he’d use to destroy the lab machinery if Leadville pressed too close.

His quiet choice made her proud and sad at the same time, a feeling that was wild and lonely and right. Even worse than the Leadville government controlling this nanotech would be no one having it at all. Young had no intention of blowing up what so many people had struggled so hard to attain.

They were slow, the jeep straining to pull its load, but even at twenty-five miles per hour they were up Folsom Boulevard and moving north on 54th before they heard the planes again.

The fighters crossed overhead, a sky quake. Pressed between D.J. and Cam at the rear of the jeep, not down in the bench seat but perched on the rim of the vehicle’s body, Ruth tried to look around but lowered her head before she lost her balance.

They bumped through the adjoining yards, briefly dodging eastward, then continued north on 55th. Half a block later they pointed west. From this point on it was a straight shot back through nineteen residential blocks until they approached the highway, and Jennings accelerated to keep up with the ’dozer.

“We’re going to make it,” Young said.

The enemy C-130 came head-on over square shapes of the city horizon, low and lazy, and Ruth twisted her head around again to look for the sun, completely disoriented.

Were they driving the wrong way? “Where are—”

Other voices made a confusion of the radio: “Jesus they’re the airport’s south of right at us!”

They couldn’t be lost. There was only one path back through the ruins, so the big cargo plane must be flying out of the west rather than eastward from the mountains. Soon it would pass over the freeway directly toward them.

Objects tumbled down behind the aircraft. Canisters of the snowflake nano-weapon.

Ruth tried to scream and couldn’t, lungs caught, already dead— No. The snowflake would be useless against people in containment suits. The tumbling objects were men, thick with gear, and long appendages whipped upward from each human figure and rippled and spread. Parachutes.

Already there were half a dozen rectangular gliders seesawing down in the C-130’s wake.