Plague Zone

26

Colonel Jia Yuanjun snapped to attention and tried to convey in his bearing what could not be seen in his disheveled appearance. Dedication. Fortitude. He’d had only a few minutes’ warning to comb his hair and tug uselessly at his foul uniform, trying to straighten it before greeting his visitors. His forearm throbbed in a crude plaster cast.

“Fàng sng,” said General Qin. At ease.

“Welcome, sir,” Jia responded, also in Mandarin. He was unsure what to make of the general’s expressionless face, but Qin’s uniform was clean, as were those of his two subordinates and three Elite Forces bodyguards.

MSS General Qin was in his sixties, stout, sunworn, and quivering with strain. Jia saw a tic in Qin’s jowls. That was bad. The old man was aware of it, too, patting at the underside of his jaw in a brusque, fussy manner. That his visit was a surprise could also be seen as dangerous. The Z-9 military helicopter that flew up from San Diego had declared itself a medevac, bringing much needed supplies to Jia’s base. Instead, it carried the MSS officer who’d become third-in-command of Chinese California after the bombing.

Jia did not believe this subterfuge was intended to fool the enemy. No doubt there were still American satellites overhead, but there was no one left to control those eyes and ears. Jia was fortunate that one of his sergeants had risked a call from their landing field, announcing the real identity of their visitors as General Qin walked into the base.

Jia regretted the look of his makeshift command center even more than his own poor showing. It had been necessary to escape the ash. They’d moved everything they could salvage to a second-level barracks with its ceiling and walls intact, using the bunk beds to hold their electronics, display screens, and paper notes. The place was a madhouse. Forty men knelt or sat on the floor to access their consoles while a dozen more acted as runners, stepping over an unsecured mess of cables and power cords. The noise was staggering. So was the smell. The ash had stolen into the room with them, and everyone was bloodied and sweat-stained and sour with dehydration and fear.

Silence touched the barracks as Jia met Qin at the door. It vanished again in the busy voices, but everyone was aware of the change. The new arrivals looked as if they’d walked straight out of mainland China, unsullied and neat, and their authority was all the greater for their cleanliness. They had been protected while everyone else in California burned.

“Where are your SATCOM personnel?” Qin demanded.

“Here, sir.” Jia pointed.

“These officers are now in command,” Qin said as his two subordinates moved past him into the barracks, a major and a lieutenant. Each man held a briefcase. The major also carried his own laptop.

Jia felt a flash of resentment. We’ve done well, he thought.

“There is someplace we can speak undisturbed,” Qin said, making his words a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir. Let me leave instructions with—”

“My officers are in charge,” Qin said.

“Yes, sir. This way, sir.” Jia didn’t even glance back into the room to signal the two survivors from his command team, Yi and Renshu. Instead, he walked from the barracks with the first of Qin’s bodyguards close at his back. His stride was brisk. It was important to Jia that he wasn’t shot within hearing of his troops, and Qin would afford him no more mercy or ceremony than he had given Dongmei.

The corridor stirred with soot and debris, open to the night at one end. Each breath tasted of failure. Then the general emerged from the barracks himself with a second bodyguard. Jia’s relief was unfounded, perhaps — would they arrest him? — but he couldn’t repress a sense of victory, which made him resentful again. He loathed them for making him afraid.

The door shut and left them in darkness. One of Qin’s bodyguards turned on a flashlight. Above, Jia heard shouts from his engineers and the dozens of soldiers pressed into duty as laborers. They had worked all day to secure the base and would continue all night. He was proud of them.

Jia led Qin and his bodyguards past two doors, the second blocked by a hunk of concrete and rebar. Insignificant pieces of grit littered the floor, difficult to see in the ash. Qin moved elegantly in the pool of light cast from his bodyguard’s hand. Nevertheless, Jia saw an opportunity to show respect.

“Watch your step, sir,” he said.

The third door led to a supply room that had been locked until the wall buckled in the quakes, fracturing the door and its frame. Otherwise Jia would have forced it open. No one had recovered the keys, but the children’s boxed juices and the canned goods inside had been all that kept his troops going since sunup.

Jia sidestepped into the doorway and hit the light switch, illuminating the empty concrete. Nothing was left except one garish blue wrapper with a smiling red dog on it. Jia stared at the cardboard. Would it share his tomb?

No, he realized. They weren’t even looking at him.

“Sir, I don’t like this,” the bodyguard said, tracing his flashlight up the exterior of the doorframe.

“A few cracks in a wall are hardly the greatest risk we’ve seen today,” Qin said. “Leave me. Guard the hall. I only require a few minutes.”

What does he want?

Jia faced Qin as the older man entered the room alone. Qin hadn’t even bothered to have Jia’s sidearm confiscated, which spoke of his power and his toughness. Clearly he was also familiar with Jia’s MSS files. Qin expected obedience. Jia would give it to him. He only wished he looked the part. He felt conscious again of the blood and filth on his uniform— yet he also gloried in it. There had never been time to hunt up a new set of clothes. Nor was it likely that there were new clothes, certainly not enough for everyone, and Jia was disinterested in making himself more comfortable when his troops could not share the same improvement. His tattered uniform spoke well of his own conduct.

He’d pushed his men harder than ever. It had taken them hours to establish their new command center and reconnect with the few radar stations left in southern California. During all that time, they were helpless, their borders unmonitored and unpatrolled. The majority of their surviving planes had been returning from enemy territory, scattered across North America. A few aircraft were tucked away here and there in California, but lost their runways in the holocaust or their pilots or their ground crews.

Jia’s base was among the first to come online again. Until early afternoon, in fact, he had been the senior officer in charge of the People’s Liberation Army. Radio was intermittent. Landlines were gone completely. He was able to form up some infantry and several armored units in a dozen locations, but to what point? None of them could reach each other, nor would they have been any use against enemy fighters.

It was even more crucial to watch for missile launches, either China’s own or another American attack. He needed to know. Yet he was unable to reconnect with their satellites.

His first useful command had been to redirect their planes into Russian territory, where the air fields were free for the taking. This decision seemed even more farsighted when he learned that a second wave of Chinese ICBMs blasted Montana and the Dakotas, destroying the last of the American silos. He’d preserved their air strength, which otherwise might have suffered further casualties in the missile strikes. Then he set patrols above California again.

There were two counter-attacks. Three F/A-18s flew out of Flagstaff and knocked down five Chinese fighters before falling themselves. A single V-22 Osprey rose out of Colorado and, using Chinese codes, pierced deep into California before it was shot down, too. There were also several American planes that ran for the East Coast or overseas. They were pursued and killed. Perhaps a few escaped.

The fight was won, but the cost had been too steep. Jia was even rightly to blame, not a scapegoat, and honor demanded that the men who’d set the war in motion take responsibility for their losses. Qin would assume command of this base — that much was obvious.

I was glad to serve, Jia thought as he drew his sidearm and presented the weapon to Qin, grip first. With the same motion, he also bowed.

“Twenty minutes ago, our nanotech labs failed to check in on schedule,” Qin said, surprising him.

“Sir?”

“Perhaps their radio failed,” Qin said. “Their buildings might have fallen in an aftershock. Or there may be a larger problem. We need to be sure.”

There may be weaponized nanotech drifting from the site, Jia thought, completing the fear that Qin left unmentioned.

“I considered diverting my helicopter,” Qin said, “but my mission here is critical and we were only seven men including our pilot. I believe you’ve gathered a second helicopter at this base, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

Before the plague year, the PLA had begun a major new initiative to increase their helicopter fleet. Even so, they’d lagged far behind more modern armies. Only a handful of Z-9 and Z-10 birds came with their invasion force, and they lacked enough pilots to fully take advantage of the helicopters they’d gained in the war. A functioning, crewed helicopter was priceless, but earlier today Jia had ordered one of the very few aircraft in the region to himself in hope of salvaging more electronics from other bases. They’d seen limited success, yet this decision also seemed well fated, so he risked a question.

“Are the nanotech labs nearby?”

“They’re less than an hour from this base — in San Bernadino, against the mountains,” Qin said.

This information had been kept from Jia. He’d only seen reports on the scientists’ progress, but he understood why he’d been closer to the program than he’d guessed. There had been quarantine protocols in case of disaster. He was inside those lines. Before the missiles fell, he would have been able to reach the labs if necessary.

“We may bomb the site,” Qin said. “I want you to lead a strike team to the labs first. Secure our research and our people there, too. Prove yourself again. There are some who want to strip you of your commission, but you are essential to the MSS and we always take care of our own.”

Jia’s pulse quickened at the inflection in Qin’s words. We. Something had been nagging at Jia since they met, but he’d been too upset to realize it. Now the older man grazed the back of Jia’s hand with his fingertips. The gesture was fleeting. Qin’s hand was already gone, but there was a watchful light in his eyes, and no Chinese officer would have touched another like this in normal conversation.

Qin Cho was homosexual, too.

The realization went through Jia like clean sky breaking through the ash. He knows my secret, Jia thought. He shares it! Then, even more startlingly, He could have me if he wanted. He owns me. And I him.

Jia’s pulse quickened. Qin was not unattractive. His authority more than compensated for his stout, older body, as did the experience in his eyes. The danger was its own forbidden thrill. Jia could barely imagine a time or a place to share the other man’s bed, but the prospect was unforgettable.

He’d long worried that his superiors knew of his sexuality and were ready to use it against him. What if their plan was even more layered than he’d guessed? If his attacks failed, they could use his deviancy to condemn him — but if he succeeded, they would be certain that the lead officer was one of their own.

There are more of us in hiding! Jia thought. At least, he wanted to believe Qin wasn’t the only one like him, because he could barely contain his excitement.

Did their curse supersede their other loyalties? Probably not. But it might create a phantom power bloc within the Ministry of State Security. The most hawkish elements of the MSS had risen to leadership. A few men in key positions could affect the fate of a nation, and homosexuals would be driven by the deepest motivation to succeed as well as the greater goals of China. They were also less likely to be constrained by concern for any wives or children.

What if their shame and their pride were ultimately responsible for the aggression that led to the war? Or the development of the mind plague itself? Could they hope to use nanotech to rewire themselves and become normal hetero males someday? Was that even possible?

If Jia had been reported when he was young, that information must have been intercepted and suppressed by someone who was always looking for more recruits. Then they’d watched him. Jia couldn’t evaluate how high their control might be felt. Qin had been a senior general even before the missiles fell, and he wouldn’t have come into the quarantine zone himself if he were the topmost surviving member of their brotherhood.

Jia yearned for more power for himself. Recognition. Acceptance. Even if it was in secret, to be welcomed by people who shared his stigma was irresistible.

This is how he seduces me, Jia thought. They would be like lovers. Whether they literally pleasured each other or not was almost beside the point. It was the hateful truth that committed them.

“I am honored, sir,” Jia said. “Thank you, sir.”

“Then you understand?”

“I believe I do, sir. Yes, sir.”

Qin had studied Jia’s face as he worked through his real izations in a flurry, watching every perceivable shock and emotion. He must have felt the same when they approached him, Jia thought. How long had the cabal existed? Years? The notion made his head swim. He felt as if he’d found himself on a ladder above a vast pit. One misstep would kill him — but there was also an exhilarating sense of attachment. Some day perhaps he would be looking down at another man, helping him up, too.

Jia grinned, but the older man’s face darkened as if rejecting him. Did he think the grin was flirtatious? A ploy?

Did I mean it that way? Jia wondered.

“You know there was an American flight into California four hours ago,” Qin said.

“Yes, sir. We shot it down, sir.”

“They were using Second Department codes. The timing seems suspicious. The detachment guarding the labs is not unsubstantial. A full platoon of Black Tigers resided with the science teams. They were also equipped with two helicopters of their own. If their radios failed, why haven’t either of those helicopters come for help?”

“The American plane was destroyed, sir.”

“What if there were more? Could the Americans have slipped another aircraft through your lines?”

“Yes, sir.” Jia was formal now. He’d seen his mistake. His relationship with Bu Xiaowen had suffered from the same quandary, which was precisely why homosexuality was outlawed by the PLA. Favoritism was a weakness. So was forced submission and the resentment that might come with rape. If the cabal was as well entrenched as Jia hoped, they must be even stricter in demanding a hands-off policy among themselves. It was a schizophrenic but vital law, denying their very nature. Were there exceptions? Covert liaisons? There must be. But at what penalty?

“I realize you were half-blind,” Qin said.

Jia nodded. Their radar net was still only at 40 percent, and, in too many places, orbital surveillance was blocked by fallout.

“We don’t expect the impossible,” Qin said.

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“But all of us will suffer if there are American Special Forces at those labs.” Qin emphasized one word again. Us. The signal was unmistakable.

If the cabal had started the war, their destinies would be tied to the nanotech. They would live or die with it. The momentum they’d gained from the mind plague and its spin-off technologies would either further their rise to prominence, or, if the research was lost, the sudden lack of potential could leave them susceptible to new bids for power from more conventional elements in the military.

“Don’t fail us,” Qin said, quieting his voice. Then his fingertips brushed Jia’s forearm again as he appraised the younger man.

It was an invitation. Qin could protect Jia from the leaders outside their cabal if he succeeded. Bringing back the scientists and the nanotech would help offset the failures they perceived in Jia’s conduct… if he really knew what he was getting into.

Jia began to have second thoughts. What if Qin was playing him? There might not be a cabal after all, only Qin. The general could be running an unsanctioned operation and using Jia for his own purposes. Jia hoped not. If an uncontrolled nano weapon had silenced the labs, he might die as soon as his helicopters flew into the area… but if a cabal existed, even his death would serve them by warning them to contain the nanotech by any means necessary, even nuclear, thus limiting the damage to their political strength. He would be a part of their legacy. And if there were enemy soldiers inside California, Jia would welcome a chance to punish the Americans with his own hands.

Either way, Qin owns me, he thought, stiffening into a salute. “I’ll have my strike team assembled in five minutes, sir.”

Cam tucked the penlight against his uniform when he heard helicopters, smothering its white beam before lifting his head from beneath a Ford pickup truck. “Choppers,” he said. “Two, maybe three.”

Alekseev didn’t climb out from under the vehicle. “I am hearing them,” he said. “Let me finish.”

“We don’t want to get caught in the open.”

“They will go to your Saint Bernadine first. Give me the light.”

Cam shut his mouth. There was no sense in agitating someone with his fingers in a block of C-4. Alekseev had wedged a fistful of plastic explosive against the Ford’s driver-side rear wheel, where it would blow upward through the axle and truckbed. Cam aimed the light below the truck again, keeping his head turned the other way. Unfortunately, his night-vision was awful after watching Alekseev work.

They weren’t concerned about anyone sneaking out of the rubble. The Chinese might have garrisoned other troops nearby, or maybe a few men had survived Kendra’s attacks, but moving silently through the debris was impossible.

Cam was able to discern most of the ruins immediately surrounding him in the weak halo of the penlight. Within five yards, the ash-colored wreckage faded into the ash-colored gloom. It was silent, too, except for the falling whisper of the dust, which reminded Cam of snowstorms and skiing and better days. He even enjoyed his melancholy, because he knew this small peace couldn’t last.

The helicopters pulsed out of the northwest, vibrating across the city. Cam felt the noise in the lumber and glass beneath his boots. Somewhere to his left, he heard the clink of bricks as a dune collapsed.

Cam and Alekseev had been hustling through the mayhem on the west side of the school for most of an hour, risking the penlight after Cam opened his cheek on a jutting length of wood. They’d both fallen several times, bruising their hands and knees. Medrano, alone, was on the north. Obruch had the east and southern sides where their defenses would be the weakest. Nor did they expect much chance to reinforce each other if necessary. The perimeter was too big. Cam had accompanied Alekseev less as a guard than as a student. He might need to know how to wire the plastic explosives himself.

“They’re down,” Cam said as the tremor of the aircraft briefly magnified, then cut off as the helicopters landed at Saint Bernadine. With the change in sound, his pulse deepened, too, finding a familiar calm. Beneath it, he felt a fresh edge of determination that was both welcome and unwanted. The waiting was over.

It won’t take them long to realize no one’s there, he thought. “We’d better start back. Save whatever you have left.”

“Da. I’m done.”

At each place they’d stopped, first Alekseev had shaped the off-white clay. Then he’d eased a thin cylinder into the explosives and set the tiny digital readout near its top. The cylinders were frequency-specific remote control blasting caps. The initiator was an olive drab clamshell like a small lunchbox. Most of it was nothing but battery, a blunt antenna, and shock-absorbent steel. The bottom face held a digital display and a simple twenty-three button keyboard. The first twenty were square. The next three were rectangular and read ARM, CANCEL, and FIRE. It was American gear that Alekseev’s people had scavenged during the first war.

Seeing those words in Alekseev’s hands was strange. Just a day ago, they would have been at each other’s throats. Now they were friends. Cam didn’t like it, but he needed the other man.

As he worked, Alekseev had keyed each blasting cap to one button at frequencies between 1000 and 3000 megahertz. Medrano used 4000 to 5000, Obruch 6000 to 7000. Each of them would be able to detonate the others’ charges if necessary, including Cam, who carried his own initiator. Their best hope of buying time would be to appear as if a significant force had occupied the campus. That meant bombs wherever they couldn’t direct their guns. Most of those charges would be small. Alekseev hadn’t brought as much C-4 as he would like — but they had other surprises.

They also hoped the Chinese would be hamstrung by the fear of damaging their labs and scientists. The Chinese probably didn’t know those people were dead. Alekseev planned to fake a hostage situation. With any luck, they could string out their negotiations until Kendra infected them all.

Deborah flinched but said nothing when the helicopters’ beat reverberated through the tent. Instead, she watched Kendra. Then something pattered against the black plastic sheeting above them. The debris slid down two sides of the tent, stroking it like fingers and odd faces. Was the building itself cracking in the new sound? Did Kendra even notice?

The skinny, bedraggled witch had frozen ten minutes ago. She said nothing. She did nothing. She only stared at the machining atomic force microscope. Deborah was afraid to jostle her, but how long could they just stand here?

The black tent held them like a shroud or a veil. It seemed much smaller than fifteen-by-twenty feet. The walls shone in the halogen lamps, crisscrossed with shadows from the equipment and themselves. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if the plastic wasn’t opaque or if they had a radio or someone to talk to on the outside.

Deborah’s shoulder hurt. Her face. Her chest. At least there was water. Medrano had brought two gallon jugs from the labs’ kitchen before he taped the plastic shut, and Deborah used one to wash her own face and neck and Kendra’s bone-tight skin, too, caring for the dull-eyed witch as if she was a young girl or a doll. It seemed to revive her. For a while, Kendra had been sharp, multitasking like a different person altogether. Their first thirty minutes together had been harried and productive as Kendra skimmed through binders and sample cases, snapping over her shoulder at Deborah as she described the Mandarin characters she sought.

They’d found early models of the vaccine. They inserted one substrate after another into the MAFM, Kendra using Deborah as her hands, talking to her, thinking with her. Deborah was impressed by her momentum. Kendra identified the fifth and eighth samples as ideal. Then she’d sketched on the notepad, solidifying her concepts. Deborah thought the drawing looked like a tadpole. It had one long-necked curl above an oval body, meant to swim and hunt, but first Kendra needed to build it and she’d grimaced when two laptops denied her, lacking the necessary passwords. At last she’d accessed the third, mumbling in Chinese with a laugh. That was the first hint something was going wrong. Her movements became stuttered, even manic. She spoke to Deborah again — in the wrong language.

Kendra had brought up twenty files and discarded fifteen more while Deborah struggled to grasp their significance, recognizing nothing. The other woman’s mind simply outpro cessed her own, but it was also fragmenting at that speed. “We can program the MAFM to assemble a bastardized nano from preexisting work,” she’d said. “We’ll save hours. But first I need to… What if we… No.”

Then silence. Kendra stopped. Deborah didn’t know where she’d gone. Each breath felt like pressing on eggshells. Deborah thought she could bring Kendra back with a word or a touch, but what if that was a mistake? She might disrupt whatever calculations were taking place. Above all, it was important not to frighten the ugly witch.

They couldn’t rely on her, and Deborah wondered what Kendra would do when the shooting started.