Plague War

“Then we’ll just keep feeling them out,” Hernandez said, watching the dark sea above him. The thick, unmoving clouds didn’t smell like snow, but that could change and it would be a problem. It would keep them in their trenches and he couldn’t afford the delay. “I’ve met Ward,” he said. “He’s tough.”

“Yes.”

Hernandez nodded unhappily. “And it’s going to be as much like summer as it gets up here for the next few months. He might not come around. Not in time.”

U.S. Army Lieutenant Ward occupied a ridge two miles to their east with thirty men. Marine Colonel Densen was positioned another four miles beyond Ward with a group of a hundred and ‚fty. All were artillery-and-infantry units — they were meant to harass an air invasion just like Hernandez — but the rebel assault out of New Mexico had yet to come and they didn’t know why. Leadville had only told them to stay ready in the last radio alert.

“Walk with me,” Hernandez said. He had to maintain the ‚ction that he’d gone outside to check on the other shelters, so they’d make an appearance at Bunker 4.

There was very little starlight, but the moon was rising in the east and had yet to disappear into the clouds. For another twenty minutes, the bone-white arc of the moon would remain visible between the jagged black earth and the smooth line of the clouds overhead.

Hernandez didn’t look directly at the gleaming light because it would blind him. His eyes felt huge and sensitive. Instead he followed the muted thud of his own boots against the pale rock, moving slowly but with con ‚dence. It was a world of silence and shapes. Gilbride stumbled and Hernandez turned and caught his arm. “Easy, Nate,” he said.

He thought the attacks out of New Mexico might not come. It looked like something big was developing. The rebels must be aware of it, too. In fact, the rebels probably knew more than Hernandez, because they had satellite coverage, whereas he was still radio silent.

Three days ago, a huge †ight of C-17 and C-130J cargo transports had lifted out of Leadville — forty-‚ve planes by his count. The †eet went southeast in two groups, the C-17s outpacing the older, prop-driven C-130Js. Where were they going? Each group had also been accompanied by a ‚ghter escort of six F-22 Raptors, but Hernandez didn’t ‚gure it was an offensive against New Mexico or Arizona. For one thing, an assault would have come back within hours.

Hernandez believed the Russian evacuation was ‚nally in play. The transports must have gone around the world, but ‚rst they’d taken an angle to elude the rebels and the Canadians. So why didn’t New Mexico attack? Leadville was short on air power and he wasn’t sure the rebel leaders would hold back to avoid upsetting the diplomacy between Leadville, India, and the Russians. Or maybe they would. The rebels might hope to ally themselves with the new Indo-Russian state after defeating Leadville. They could be delaying to keep from threatening the Russian evacuation in any way. Far stranger deals had happened in other wars.

Hernandez was deep into a smaller conspiracy himself. For eight days now he had been using his sergeants to make contact with other nearby units. Delicate work. The ‚rst overture was simply that Gilbride and Lowrey went in person, off the radio. Then it was discussing each other’s vulnerabilities and how to cover each other, what supplies do you need, I can spare some blankets if you’ll give me aspirin.

The decision to send Gilbride and Lowrey as runners was also a cautious signal to his own troops. There was no way to conceal his sergeants’ absence for two or three days at a time. More than that, simply by exploring around him, Hernandez had acknowledged the anger and the desperation of his Marines.

He’d also made twice as many ‚eld promotions as he’d intended, giving stripes to eleven troopers. Most of the new ranks were deserved. One was awarded in the hope of pacifying a troublemaker. It couldn’t last. Very soon Hernandez would have to deliver something substantial, and he was reluctant to cross that line, because it would be a commitment. It would be treason. And yet the calendar was speeding by. June 2^nd seemed like a long way from winter, but the seasons changed early at this elevation. Hernandez only had another ten or twelve weeks to ‚gure out what the hell he was doing before snow was a certainty.

Stay loyal? Break away? He had no way to move south without being airlifted, and he couldn’t see the rebel forces in New Mexico gambling even one plane to bring his Marines to their side. The best he might be able to do would be to move his troops out on their own, away from the war, but then what? How would they survive? At least here they had a steady supply of food, small but steady. Yesterday Leadville had even driven out two wooden crates containing stale coffee, fresh green onions, and a few bags of cow meat.

Leadville must realize how easily they could be bought, and Hernandez looked at Gilbride again as the two of them picked their way through the endless rock. Thank you, he thought. He knew his sergeants were working even harder than he was, not just the physical effort to scale across to the other mountains and back, but enduring the tension within their own squads. A war of nerves. There was no easy way out.

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.