Plague War (19 page)

In fact, Hernandez had decided not to get out. The basic facts of the situation remained. Leadville was better prepared than anyone else to develop the nanotech, so he would stay and defend the city. The problem was in the leadership’s decision to horde the vaccine for themselves. The only path to peace would be to share it, not only on this continent but overseas.

Hernandez was very late in coming to this realization. He wasn’t proud of himself. It had been too easy to go along with them when he was on the inside. He had been a part of the problem. That was the truth...So he would stay, but in his mind he had already rebelled.

Given enough time, enough work, Hernandez was sure he could convince most of the other ‚eld commanders to join him. Eventually the chance would come; the chance to make an excuse to report in person, bringing Gilbride and a handpicked squad alongside him; the chance to imprison or kill most of the top leadership and then cement his takeover with the very same troops they’d positioned all around Leadville.

* * * *

But he was out of time. Hernandez woke from a light, uncomfortable doze into frigid green daylight, the morning sun ‚ltering through the command tent.

“Sir!” Lucy McKay shook his arm.

“Where is—” He heard ‚ghters. “I want missiles right into them, do it now before—”

The scream of the jets was away from his mountain, receding quickly. Hernandez staggered up and grabbed his jacket and boots in a confusion of people as Anderson and Wang rolled out of their sleeping bags.

McKay looked wild with her hood down and her color high in her cheeks. “It’s four F-35s, sir,” she said. “They’re ours. Looks like they’re going east.”

“Are there choppers out of New Mexico?”

“Command hasn’t said anything on the radio.”

He got outside with McKay still crowding his side. She was holding binoculars for him, their best, a pair of 18 × 50 image-stabilized Canons. Hernandez nodded thanks, although there was nothing to see. The jets were on the north side of the mountain. At a glance, the sky to the south was empty, too. There were less clouds than during the night. He studied the long slants of yellow sunlight.

McKay continued to ‚dget and Hernandez said, “Stay on the radio. Don’t call. Just stay on it and shout as soon as you know something.”

“Yes, sir.”

He stepped past Wang at the .50-caliber gun, past Bleeker and Anderson with a missile launcher. Bleeker looked steady but Anderson’s sun-scorched face was tight and Hernandez said, “You’re doing ‚ne, Marine.”

Every alert wore them down a little more. When the ‚ghters scrambled at night, there was the panic between getting outside and putting on enough clothes ‚rst. Four troopers had lost skin on their ‚ngers when they ran to their weapons bare-handed. Another badly bruised her knee when she fell in the dark. But they had to respond. There was no way to know if Leadville was launching an attack or defending against one, and their own lives were on the line.

Hernandez moved completely out of the trench, stepping up above the rock wall. There was shouting across the hill and he used his binoculars to sweep Bunkers 5, 4, and 2.

Lowrey stood at the edge of 2, yelling at someone inside. Then he glanced up with his own binoculars. Hernandez raised one ‚st, then showed an open hand like a traf‚c cop.
Hold tight
. Lowrey repeated the gesture before he turned and relayed the command to Bunkers 3 and 6, which were beyond Hernandez’s sight. It was ridiculous, but they only had one set of civilian walkie-talkies and just eight spare batteries. They needed to use hand signals or runners as much as possible.

Hernandez was pleased to see that his people continued to look ready, jumpy but ready, and he caught a few words of the hollering over in 2 now. “Up! Shut up so I can!”

They were shouting at each other to be quiet so they could listen for helicopters. Absolutely ridiculous. They needed radar, but all they had were two more binoculars, their naked eyes, and the broken land itself. The mountains channeled sound but also confused it, continuing to echo with the dull hammer of the jets. Hernandez scanned out across the upheaval of black spaces and snow and earth. The hazy sky. Nothing.

* * * *

Forty minutes later he’d given the order to stand down as well as calling in his two lookouts. He was out of position himself. He could have kept his scouts in place but it was shit work, missing hot coffee and food. That was a leader’s prerogative.

Hernandez had climbed up to the saddle of rock at the top of the mountain with his binoculars and a walkie-talkie, hoping for some clue down in the valleys around Leadville. Instead, there was movement far out to the east, a single cargo plane accompanied by a single jet.

At this distance, even the larger C-17 was little more than a dot, but Hernandez recognized the speed and shape of it.
That must be one of ours,
he thought, because no more ‚ghters had scrambled to meet them. Still, the appearance of the transport was unusual. Nothing ever †ew in from over the plains of the Midwest because there was nothing out there.

He thumbed his send button and said, “McKay, call in for orders. I have a C-17 and an F-35 coming out of the east. Tell them we’re weapons tight. Permission to ‚re?”

The ’talkie crackled. “Aye, sir.”

Hernandez didn’t really have any chance at the planes. He estimated their range at twenty-‚ve miles, although that might shrink to twenty if they continued in toward Leadville. Even if he’d brought a missile launcher, the surface-to-air Stingers had a max range of three miles. Still, he knew that a request to go weapons free would get a response.

It came in less than a minute. The ’talkie hissed again and McKay said, “Hold ‚re. Hold ‚re. They say it’s a Russian envoy, sir. He’s on our side. It sounds like there was some harassment from the breakaways out over the Midwest, that’s why our jets went to meet him.”

“All right. Thank you.”

So the other ‚ghters were providing a protective curtain far to the north. Hernandez felt a moment of empathy for the pilots. There was nowhere to eject if they were hit. Even when they were okay, they rode a tightrope above a world of ruins and death. For once he was glad to be on this mountain.

The two planes passed over the Continental Divide. The C-17 began to descend as its ‚ghter escort pulled ahead. Hernandez couldn’t see the marsh †ats north of Leadville, but he’d watched enough to learn that the long highway had become one of the main runways for local forces. Leadville command seemed to be bringing the C-17 there, rather than using the short strip at the county airport south of town.

Suddenly the cargo plane dipped hard and Hernandez tensed against the frozen ground. Then the plane leveled out again, as if someone grabbed the controls. It circled uncertainly, casting left and right like a bird that had just opened its eyes. It †ew like a different plane altogether. After the violence of its nosedive and the new way the aircraft handled, Hernandez did not doubt that a different pilot sat in the cockpit—and the real proof was in the change of †ight path. The C-17 was already drifting toward the city.

The ‚ghter was more than a mile in front but accelerated into a long, high loop, trying to swing back and catch the larger, slower plane. Too late.

Hernandez stared for one instant, his ‚ngers clenched on his binoculars. Was it a September 11
^th
style attack? A heavy transport might destroy several blocks in the downtown area, but how could the Russians be sure that it mattered? Unless they got the leadership, it would a critical strike but not a deathblow. Unless the plane was loaded with explosives or worse. Some sort of nanotech?

A cold sheet of horror propelled him up from the ground and he turned to run, glancing back despite himself. His gaze fell brie†y to the miles of up-and-down terrain between himself and Leadville and then Frank Hernandez sprinted away, screaming into his walkie-talkie.

“Cover!
Take cover!
Everybody down right now!”

In downtown Leadville, Nikola Ulinov emerged from a Chevy Suburban into the sound of aircraft. He carefully ignored it. His head wanted to turn up toward the distant thrum of jet turbines, but he kept his gaze on the sidewalk as he followed Senator Kendricks and General Schraeder from the car. It wasn’t so dif‚cult. The sound was everywhere, rolling from the mountains, and he didn’t need to look. He knew what was coming.

“This way, Ambassador,” said a young man in a trim blue suit. Pale and clean-shaven, the senator’s aide had obviously never spent much time outside in this high place, and the lack of a beard was its own signal.

The men surrounding Ulinov all shared this luxury, like a uniform. It was the one thing in common between the security units that had accompanied Kendricks and Schraeder to the small plaza in front of city hall. The four civilian agents wore dark suits and carried only sidearms, whereas the two Army Rangers were in camou†age and boots and carried ri†es, but they were all smooth-faced and none of them had that painful thinness he’d seen in so many other survivors.

“Well, it looks pretty good,” Kendricks announced, surveying the bright ribbons and †ags that decorated the plaza.

The lead agent said, “Yes, sir.” But he was glancing over the rooftops, where soldiers stood in pairs in clear view. There would be snipers tucked into key spots as well.

So far as Ulinov knew, today was only the second time since the plague year that the top levels of the U.S. government would appear in public together. The layers of protection around this spot were intense. There hadn’t been any need to come in two Suburbans. They could have walked. The city had been shut down and the streets were empty, except for the armor and machine guns at key intersections.

“Nice day for it, too,” Kendricks said, directing a grim smile at Ulinov.

Ulinov only nodded. Kendricks seemed exceptionally pleased and was early for his little ceremony. He wanted to make this place his own before the Russian envoys were driven in from the air‚eld. The scene was well-crafted. Kendricks had transformed himself to match. He’d put away his cowboy out‚t and donned a business suit instead, keeping his string tie but giving up his white hat, exposing his rich brown hair to the sun and the cool hint of a breeze.

The squat face of the city building had been lined with red, white, and blue bunting. In the open square in front stood a podium, four cameras, two clumps of folding chairs, and the beginnings of a crowd. There were the ‚lm crews and select media. Ulinov also saw a small pack of children with three teachers who’d wisely decided to keep the kids busy by talking to an Air Force general in dress blues.

Kendricks moved away from his Suburban in a phalanx of men. Ulinov limped after the group. Kendricks didn’t look back, but Schraeder extended his hand to Ulinov’s elbow.

“We’re all the way in front,” Schraeder said gently.

Ulinov nodded again, lost in his thoughts. As if it was possible to hide from the drone of the plane.

He looked exactly like these privileged men, he knew, sharp and tidy. That made him surprisingly uncomfortable. Yesterday, Schraeder had sent over two men with scissors, soap, a razor, and new clothes, and little by little it had felt like giving himself up. He didn’t know why. He’d spent a lifetime keeping everything in its place. For a cosmonaut, neatness and details were critical, and yet Ulinov would have preferred to wear his nation’s uniform. There had been more than one in his duffel bag in the
Endeavour
, but it was better for the Americans to feel that they controlled him down to the smallest details.

The only thing of lasting importance was his conduct. His heart. His memory. He knew he’d done well, and that helped him control his fear. More and more, he’d taken refuge in his past, recounting the people and places of his life, his father and sister and the simple comfort of home, his girlfriends, the magni‚cent killing beauty of space. He was glad Ruth wasn’t here. He would have liked to listen to her tease him about his haircut and his suit, but the two of them had always been separated by duty and now he realized that it for the best. If she was still alive, he wished her nothing but success.

He thought of the other astronauts and the friendships they had shared in the ISS despite their differences. American. Russian. Italian. None of that had been a problem up there and it made him feel both wistful and glad.

At last, Ulinov looked up.

The noise was unending. Louder now. As the C-17 passed over the nearest peaks, the basins around Leadville had caught and echoed the sound. A moment ago there had been another subtle change as the hum of the engines deepened.

Kendricks missed it, making eye contact with a Special Forces colonel who stood near the last row of folding chairs. “Hello, Damon,” Kendricks said easily, offering his small hand. “Early bird gets the worm, eh?”

“You and me both, Senator,” the colonel said.

But at Ulinov’s side, the lead agent put his ‚ngers to his ear-mike and muttered, “Ah shit.” Ulinov also saw several of the children lift their heads, restless in their perfect clothes. An eight-year-old boy poked an elbow into his friend’s side and was reprimanded. “Stop it,” their teacher said.

At the same time, the silhouettes of the men on the rooftops shifted and turned.

“Sir. Excuse me.” The lead agent stopped Kendricks just as he began to stride through the corridor between the folding chairs. “Senator? We’re on alert.”

Schraeder reacted ‚rst. “Where?”

“The air‚eld. Their plane. It’s not landing.” The agent kept his left hand cupped over the side of his head, listening simultaneously as he talked.

The schoolboys traded jabs again. But their teacher was staring in the other direction.

“It’s coming toward us,” the agent said.

Kendricks’s face shrunk into something made of stone. He shot a long, searching glance at Ulinov and said, “Are you trying to strong-arm us? Change the deal?”

Ulinov didn’t answer.

Schraeder clutched his sleeve and yelled, “Damn it! Tell us what’s going on!”

Kendricks seemed not to see any threat or triumph in Ulinov, however. Kendricks took aside the agent with radio connection and Schraeder ducked his head into the conversation, too, pausing only to stab his ‚nger at Ulinov. “Search him,” Schraeder said.