Plague War

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.

One of the Army Rangers touched his pistol against Ulinov’s forehead. “Don’t even breathe,” the Ranger said as his partner shuf†ed his hands through Ulinov’s clothes, looking for weapons or electronics. All gone. He’d destroyed his PDA and cell phone two nights ago and ditched the stolen 9mm Glock through a toilet seat into the septic tank beneath.

“Back in the car,” Kendricks snapped.

The bass grumble of the plane rippled over the city, vibrating ahead of the slow-moving aircraft itself. Everyone looked up. Mixed with the sound was the higher, lifting whine of a jet ‚ghter, but neither plane was yet in sight from where Ulinov stood inside the plaza. The row of †ags undulated once in the breeze. Then a woman shrieked and Ulinov staggered as the Army Rangers hustled him after Kendricks and Schraeder, running back to the street. “Move! Move!”

The civilian agents also had their guns drawn, as if this could make any difference. It did. One of them reached the cars ‚rst and waded into the tightly packed vehicles, brandishing his pistol at a GMC Yukon that had just arrived.

“Move over!” the agent shouted.

“I’m with Congressman O’Neil,” the driver said, but the agent yelled, “We’re taking the car!”

Beside them, other units of men slammed into the parked vehicles, pushing and hollering. Within this small chaos, Ulinov’s calm ‚nally broke. Please, he thought. Oh please.

But it wouldn’t stop. Their panic increased his own adrenaline. He saw two soldiers hauling a shoulder- mounted missile launcher out into the open. Some of the children screamed, their voices lost in the noise. Then the human sounds were punctuated by the explosive bark of recoilless ri†es opening ‚re from the rooftops all around the plaza. Hidden weapons teams were trying to take down the plane — and for one instant, Ulinov hoped they would succeed.

* * * *

Kendricks had been rough with Ulinov, outraged at his spying and deceit. Through him, Kendricks had pushed the Russian leadership hard, threatening to abandon them altogether. First he let them beg. Then he relented and agreed to honor their arrangement for U.S. planes to airlift the Russians into the Indian Himalayas. Anything beyond that must bear a steep cost. Limited munitions. Limited food. Leadville would not include any livestock and there would never be any weaponized nanotech.

That’s it, Kendricks said, and the Russians had played into his power game. The Russians admitted they were desperate. They clung only to one additional point. Along with providing aircraft and pilots to help ferry their populace to India, the Russians also wanted the U.S. to accept ‚fteen hundred women and children as well as a few top diplomats directly inside Leadville, both to establish a small secondary colony and to assure the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

Too many, Kendricks said. We’ll take a hundred.

A thousand, the Russians bartered back. Then they sweetened the deal. Leadville would also be entrusted with the treasury and museum pieces of the motherland, and Ulinov wasn’t surprised that this meant a lot to the Americans, capitalists to the end, no matter that the crowns and paintings of pre-plague history could feed and protect no one. To some minds, those artifacts would now be even more priceless.

The haggling went down to ‚fty people to make room for the money—‚fty lives and tons of cold metal and jewels. They were more hostages than rescuees, of course. It went unspoken, but Leadville would have total control of their fates, and these fifty people were the wives and children of the premier, the prime minister, the generals, a famous composer. The exchange was supposed to be a new beginning, a mutual gesture of trust. The Russians surrendered their families and their wealth, and in turn the Americans promised to allow ‚ve hundred more refugees to ‚nd safety in Leadville when the American planes ‚nally returned from completing the Russian evacuation to India.

That’s a generous offer, Kendricks said, but one plane cleared in through Leadville’s defenses was all the Russians wanted. Just one.

* * * *

It rumbled over the city, a snub black shape glinting in the sun. Ulinov closed his eyes against the noise and jerking of the security men, trying to quiet himself. This wasn’t how he wanted to die, in a hubbub of ri†e ‚re with Kendricks shouting at him.

“We’ll leave every last one of your people to die, Ulinov!” Kendricks screamed as his men tore open the doors of the GMC. “Don’t you get it!? You screwed your only chance!”

“Sir!” the lead agent interrupted, pulling Kendricks around the tall silver hood of the truck.

The bitter irony was that Ulinov thought perhaps he’d brought this on himself by relaying such huge numbers through his radio link, counting jets, reporting the buildup of armored reserves. His people must have decided there was only one way they could ever stand up to Leadville’s strength.

* * * *

The Americans would have scanned the treasure and reported it clean before loading it on the other side of the world. Somehow that hadn’t been enough. Either one crate or more had been substituted before the plane took off, or one crate or more had been lined with dense, cheap silver that merely looked like Czarist-era relics in X-ray and infrared. The U.S. forces hadn’t wanted to stay on the ground any longer than necessary, within reach of Muslim rockets and infantry charges, and of course they had the money on the plane. They also had the families, with every identity con‚rmed by state records and ‚ngerprinting.

Ulinov did not doubt that these promising young sons and daughters were exactly who they were purported to be. It was only ‚fty lives — grandmothers, cousins, and wives. And yet he’d noticed one mistake among the dozens of the ‚les sent back and forth. There had been one name that was never mentioned again after appearing on a single manifest, no doubt entered by a clerk who didn’t realize what was being con‚rmed.