Newcombe nodded off on guard duty, something that had never happened so far as Cam knew. He opened his eyes to a black sky shot full of stars. The aspirin had worn off and he was dehydrated and cold, and possibly his subconscious had rebelled at the sound of two people breathing deeply when there should have been only one.
They were tucked into a crevice in a hill of granite, afraid of more nuclear strikes. Cam knocked over an empty food can and a full canteen when he sat up.
They were dangerously low on water. They’d seen one pond but it had been hazy with bugs — and they were running out of food, too. Those basic needs wouldn’t go away and Cam frowned to himself in the dark, counting through the miles left to return to the barrier. At daybreak he’d look for a creek while Ruth and Newcombe ate and packed and took care of her feet, changing her socks and applying the last of the ointment if she’d blistered again. He ‚gured that even with a short nap at lunch, they should be able to reach the mountaintop before the sun went down again.
But there were planes at twilight. Drowsing in his sleeping bag, Cam mistook the sound for a memory. So much of what he recalled and expected were nightmares.
The menacing drone grew louder.
“Wake up,” he said to himself. Then he shifted his sore body away from the rock and spoke again, setting his glove on the other man’s legs. “Newcombe. Wake up.”
Both of his companions moved. Ruth sighed, a soft, melancholy sound. Newcombe rolled over and touched his hand to his mask and coughed. Then the soldier jerked and turned his face toward the gray sky. The valley was still dark, the dawn hidden behind the mountain above them. Cam noticed that Newcombe’s gaze also went to the western horizon. He’d thought it must be a trick of the mountain peaks, re†ecting the noise somehow, but the aircraft were de‚nitely coming out of the west.
“What do we do?”
“Stay put,” Newcombe said.
Their hole in the rock wasn’t perfect but it would have to be enough. The planes were just seconds away. Newcombe found the radio and turned it on, then dug out his binoculars. Cam regretted giving his own to Mike. They watched the rim of the horizon as Ruth struggled into a sitting position between them, her naked cheek imprinted with red lines where she’d lain unconscious against her pack.
“You okay?” Cam asked quietly. She nodded and leaned against him. Her warmth was sisterly and good and for once he was able to let it be just that.
The engine noise spilled into the valley, a deep monotone thrumming. An instant later, brilliant new stars appeared over the peaks to the southwest. Metal stars. The planes lit up like ‚re as they †ew eastward into the sunrise, gliding smoothly out of the night. Cam counted ‚ve before another batch came into view. Then the night sparkled with a third group much farther south, all of them coming out of the dark western sky.
Newcombe also scanned up north, then turned back the other way. “Write for me, will you?” He didn’t lower his binoculars as he fumbled at his chest pocket with one hand.
“Yeah.” Cam took the notepad and pen.
“They have American markings,” Newcombe said. “C-17 transports. Eight, nine, ten. They have an AC-130 gunship with them. Repairs on the fuselage. I also see a commercial 737. United Airlines. But there are six MiGs, too.”
He said it as one word,
“Fighters. Russian ‚ghters. Christ. It looks like American planes with Russian escorts, but there’s also a DC- 10 that has Arabic writing on it, I think.”
“Let me see,” Ruth said.
“No.” Newcombe turned north again and continued to gaze up the valley as he ‚ddled with the radio. There was just static. Cam didn’t know if that was still because of atmospheric disturbance or because their transceiver only worked on Army bands that the planes wouldn’t use — or because the planes were running silent.
“I know a little Arabic,” Ruth said. She reached for Newcombe’s shoulder but he shrugged her off. Cam was the only one to see two of the three groups change direction, the sun winking on their undersides as they banked away to the south.
“Now there are some north of us, too,” Newcombe reported. “An old Soviet tanker. Three transports. Two ‚ghters I don’t recognize.”
“A refugee †eet,” Ruth said. “They took whatever they could ‚nd. But what’s on the other side of the Paci‚c? Japan? Korea, too. There were U.S. military bases there. That could be where our planes came from.”
“I think they’re landing,” Cam said. He pointed south, where the two farthest groups had already dwindled to pinpoints. Some of the glinting dots circled up into a holding pattern as others disappeared, merging with the ground. How? There were hardly any roads above ten thousand feet. Days ago, Newcombe had explained that C- 17s were designed to land in very short spaces if necessary, but the 737 and the ‚ghters would need runways of some kind.
Much closer, the third group had also leaned into a long easy curve, sweeping northward up through the valley. They would soon pass overhead and the vibrations of the engines ran ahead of the planes like another quake, trembling through rock and forest. Cam stared up at the machines. Then he had another thought. Maybe they were landing below the barrier wherever there were roads, as close to safety as possible. If they touched down with their cabins held at low pressure, the crews and passengers could line up at the doors, then crack the seals and run for elevation.
“I don’t like this at all,” Newcombe said. He gave Ruth the binoculars and immediately began to worm out of his sleeping bag. He grabbed the top and rolled it up, getting ready to go.
“They could be American,” Ruth said. “Overseas military.”
“No. We pulled everybody back. No way.” Newcombe cinched his sleeping bag into a tight bundle and laid it next to his pack, strapping the two together. “This was choreographed with the bomb. Don’t you get it? The electromagnetic pulse must have blinded our radar and communications across the entire hemisphere, which gave them a big fat chance to sneak in without anyone seeing them. First they stayed back far enough to make sure the EMP didn’t hurt them. Now they’re here. Shit.”
“Aren’t the Japanese on our side?” Cam asked. He didn’t think Japan had nuclear weapons, or the Koreans, but China did and there was no way to know who had stolen what.
Newcombe grunted,
A miniscule orange blossom licked up from a peak in the south. “They crashed,” Ruth said.
Then there was another puff of ‚re and a third. To Cam’s eyes, it appeared that the second explosion was in the sky. A missile? Someone was shooting at the new enemy.
“Leadville’s forward base,” he said.
“Yeah.” Newcombe quickly returned to packing but Cam stared at the distant battle, wondering if there was any reason to cheer. An odd feeling. They’d been trying to avoid the jets and choppers out of Leadville’s forward base for weeks, but now he was glad there was an American power in the Sierras.
The gun‚re that hammered them was from behind. Cam whirled to see one of the new ‚ghters stra‚ng a mountaintop about four miles to the north. One of the larger planes also made a leisurely pass, its right side erupting with incredible force. Smoke and light burst from its guns. Each hail of bullets was as large and straight- edged as a city block, two huge rectangular patches.
The wind took the shredded brown earth away in sheets and Cam felt that paralyzing fear again. The new enemy was decimating any survivors who might resist after they landed, and there was nothing he could do against such strength.
He tried to shake his numbness. “We’ll be okay,” he said as much to himself as to Ruth. “They don’t care about us. This mountain’s too small.”
“Okay,” she said.
Someone was invading California.
