“I can hardly see,” said Louise.
“Let me open this door.”
He opened the door to the pool area.
The windows—high, narrow ones—let in a ghostly brown light, probably the last natural light they would see for a long time. Louise and the girls filed through.
The pool was large. At the far end he saw a diving board, as well as a series of diving platforms. He saw some orange life rings with the word “Homestead” stenciled in black on each. It was just an ordinary institutional swimming pool, but for some reason it had a profound effect on Neil. In this age of the phytosphere, he saw it with new perspective, and the pool struck him as a museum exhibit from a time gone by. Swimming for pleasure. Swimming for recreation. Even swimming for exercise. Those were things of the past. He remembered his father’s swimming pool in suburban Illinois. Remembered himself, Gerry, Ian, and Greg horsing around in it, playing Marco Polo.
“Let’s set up by the diving board,” he said.
“Can we go swimming?” asked Morgan.
“We have to listen for the helicopter, sweetie. And we should be…ready. For anything.”
Yes, ready. They were stuck here. Until—and if—Lenny came in the helicopter. And once they got in the helicopter, then what? How long could they last at Marblehill? And could he trust Lenny and the rest of the airmen not to mutiny against them? What if the airmen turned against his family?
He looked up at the windows, hearing gunfire far to the west of the Officers’ Club.
How long before the goddamn dark came back?
He was just thinking he might take out his book again, try to lose himself in Monet’s water lilies, when his phone rang.
“Not too good,” he said, when Fonblanque asked him how things were going at Homestead.
And then he told her they were abandoning the base, and how he had devised his own 937 at Marblehill— rubbing it in because he didn’t need them, the whole Oval Office crowd—he could survive on his own.
When she asked him about the virus, he had to tell her the truth.
“It looks as if the
“Is there anything else you can do?”
He didn’t like the desperation he heard in her voice, as it allowed him to guess what had happened to the phytosphere control device. And he didn’t like how she naturally assumed they were still all part of the same team. It galled him. She obviously wanted him to work miracles. But the infrastructure was
gone. The resources were practically nonexistent. His shoulders settled and a great bitterness overcame him.
“Given what I have to work with, I don’t think so.”
“And you’ve had a look at your brother’s stuff?”
“It’s all garbage, Leanna. There’s something about a stress band, but it’s…useless observation.”
“So you have nothing encouraging I can pass on to the secretary or the president? Because the TMS offensive didn’t go exactly as planned.”
A thin layer of perspiration came to his forehead. Outside, the gunfire was getting closer. “So I heard.”
“From who?”
He hesitated, then decided it didn’t matter. “Colonel Bard.”
“We were hoping to secure the Tarsalan phytosphere control mechanism.”
“And?” But he already knew what she was going to say.
“Our orbiting mines were effective beyond our expectations. The control mechanism has been damaged and is no longer operational. We now have no effective means of turning off the phytosphere from their end.”
Neil’s shoulders sagged further. The absolute idiots. “If there’s no way to shut it off, it’s just going to grow and grow. You know that, don’t you? To be honest with you, Leanna, it could turn into a real…doomsday scenario. I mean, if it’s gone—have your troops confirmed that the control system has in fact been destroyed?”
“Damage reports are still coming in. Our technicians are looking at it. The growing consensus is that it’s beyond repair.”
He cast around for possible solutions. “What about Tarsalan survivors? Maybe they can help us develop a new one.”
“There haven’t been many survivors.”
He exhaled, and for the longest time he left his lungs empty, as if there were no point in breathing anymore. But at last he took a deep breath and sighed. “How many Tarsalans killed?”
“Confirmed or expected?”
“Confirmed.”
“Over twenty thousand. But it could rise as high as thirty. As for our own troops, only seven hundred.”
He took another deep breath, fighting to get his anxiety under control. “Did they think we were bluffing?”
“I don’t know what they thought. I’m surprised we destroyed the TMS as easily as we did. I don’t think
they were expecting such a strong military response. The alien mind-set…it’s a hard thing to second- guess.”
“What about refugees?”
“Our Maxwell fighters have orders to escort as many to Earth as they can. But some of our pilots have been engaged.”
“Are any Tarsalans getting through to the reserve areas listed in the U.N.’s last counterproposal?”
“We believe so.”
“What about Chattahoochee National Forest?”
“We have three civilian reports of alien landings in and around Chattahoochee, and dozens of reports of landings throughout the southeastern United States. It seems the Tarsalans have already engaged several units, and my analysts tell me the fighting is expected to worsen in the coming days.”
Darkness came an hour later. The fighting drew closer. His daughters looked up at the narrow windows, their faces apprehensive. He heard men yelling outside. And then he felt vibrations through the tile floor.
A second later he heard the squeaking of tank treads, then a wild cracking from the squash courts. Dust floated down from the windowsills as it was shaken loose. The water in the pool vibrated. And at last the wall that separated the pool from the squash courts bent toward them, the bricks coming apart as if they were made of marshmallows, then collapsing; first just a hole ten feet up as the tank’s main cannon came through, then a wide area below as the front part of the tank shouldered its way in.
The roar echoed through the pool area. The girls cried out and, instinctively, Neil grabbed Louise and shoved her to the floor. The tank came forward and ground its way right into the shallow end of the pool, the hot metal of its engine compartment hissing and steaming, its turret swiveling away from them toward the dressing rooms.
Several enemy airmen came in behind the tank.
The tank pivoted on its right track, turned toward the dressing rooms, then proceeded forward, its treads catching the far lip of the shallow end and pulling the armored vehicle out of the water. The tank then plowed right into the wall and continued on through the dressing rooms, eating through the Officers’
Club the way a termite eats through wood. Gunfire erupted from the direction of the dressing rooms, and bullets rocketed into the pool area. The enemy airmen took up positions on either side of the pool. The airmen saw them but seemed to realize they were noncombatants, and left them alone.
Neil gathered his family and got them on their stomachs behind the diving tower. He glanced at Morgan.
The corners of the young girl’s lips were drawn so that he could see her bottom teeth, and she looked determined to bolt regardless of the danger. Ashley was breathing fast and looking as white as paper.
Louise stared at her own clenched fists as if she didn’t want to see what was going on.
Melissa was looking at the windows high on the wall behind them. He saw in her eyes some of his own bold confidence. “Dad, I think I hear the helicopter.”
A moment later, he heard it himself, the
