to 8. “Newcombe, this is Cam.”
Ruth said, “Are you sure it was him?”
There was a man on 8 reciting coordinates, but a different voice broke over him. “Cam,” the radio said. “I hear you, buddy. Are you guys all right?”
“Oh, thank God.” Ruth squeezed Cam’s arm in celebration.
But he’d gone cold. “Shh,” he said, turning to look into the woods with a †icker of panic.
“I’m pretty sure I picked up your trail,” the radio said. “Why don’t you stop. I’ll catch up.”
The two of them had probably kicked over every pinecone, rock, and fallen branch between here and the road. Jesus. And he’d
“Cam, can you hear me?” the radio said.
“You need to answer him.” Ruth was quiet and tense. She had also turned to gaze into the shadows behind them and Cam reluctantly nodded.
He spoke to his headset. “Do you remember the name of the man who got us off the street in Sacramento?”
“Olsen,” the radio said. One of Newcombe’s squadmates had given his life to delay the paratroopers who cornered them in the city, and Cam did not believe that Newcombe would disgrace his friend’s bravery. Not immediately. It was the best test that he could manage, providing Newcombe a chance to get it wrong if the enemy had a knife to his throat.
“Okay,” Cam said. “We’ll wait.”
* * * *
They tried to set up an ambush just the same, hooking back above the trail they’d left. They waited in a jag of earth with their pistols, but only one man came out of the night.
“Newcombe,” Cam said softly. The soldier ran to them and gripped Cam’s hand in both of his own, eager for contact. With Ruth, he was more careful, touching his glove to her good arm.
He was different. He was chatty. Cam thought Newcombe had been more scared than he would ever admit. He seemed to notice the change in them, too. As they ate the last of the packaged food, Newcombe looked up from his dinner repeatedly to peer at Cam or Ruth in the darkness — mostly Ruth. Cam smiled faintly. He was glad to have anything to smile about and he saw a tired, answering slant on Ruth’s mouth as they shared two cans of chicken stew from Newcombe’s pack.
“The bug traps worked,” Newcombe said. “Worked like crazy. There were ants coming out of the ground over a mile away. I had to circle north, that’s why I got so far behind you.”
“Did you ever see who was coming down the mountain?”
“No. But the radio says it’s the Russians.”
“The Russians,” Ruth said.
“Yeah.” Newcombe had left his set on, squawking beside him. Cam thought he’d probably been making calls the entire time just to hold on to the illusion of another human presence.
Only bad luck had kept them from hearing each other. Newcombe said, “It sounds like they fucked us in some land deal and brought the nuke into Leadville with their top diplomats and a bunch of kids. Their own kids. I—”
The dim murmur of voices was overcome by a louder broadcast, a woman speaking low and fast. “George, this is Sparrowhawk. George, come back. This is Sparrowhawk.”
Newcombe dropped his stew and grabbed the headset, talking before he’d even brought the microphone to his face. “George, George, George, this is George, George, George.”
The three of them were so intent on the radio that at ‚rst Cam didn’t realize there was another sound rising over the forest. A distant, familiar roar. He looked up through the dark trees.
“I need con‚rmation, Sparrowhawk,” Newcombe said, before he turned and muttered, “It’s our guys. It has to be our guys.”
The world exploded around them. A jet ripped overhead, dragging a wall of noise behind it. The rush of turbulence crashed into the mountains and echoed back. Dry pine needles and twigs showered onto Cam’s hood and shoulders.
“Hotel Bravo, Bravo November,” the woman said, “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November.”
“There are runners at third and ‚rst,” Newcombe said urgently. “The batter is Najarro. The pitcher is a Yankee. The ball goes to third.”
Her engines were red-white ‚re in the night, curving upward suddenly in a hard leftward arc. Was she coming back again? Newcombe’s broadcast couldn’t reach more than a few miles, but if she circled she’d give away their location — She was performing evasive manuevers. There were more ‚res in the sky. A peak to the south had lit up with searing yellow trails and the jet’s engines †ared as the pilot boosted away.
“Missiles,” Cam said, because Newcombe’s head was down, concentrating on his message.
“The ball goes to third,” Newcombe repeated.
Static. Her engines whipped down against the black earth and vanished behind a hill. Then an explosion skipped up from the terrain. Cam and Ruth reached for each other. “No,” Ruth said, but the engines rose into sight again, swiftly dwindling into the east. It was a missile that had struck the ground.
Cam decided this couldn’t have been the ‚rst scout that U.S. forces had sent blitzing into California, its cameras snapping like guns. “Baseball,” he said to Newcombe. “You think the Russians are listening, too.”
“Maybe not.”
“You used my name.” Cam had never been on the radio, and wouldn’t have been a part of any manifest before the expedition into Sacramento. “The pitcher is a Yankee. New York.”
“You want to go north again,” Ruth said. “Where third base would be from here.”
“Northeast. Exactly. There’s a county air‚eld near Doyle, not far inside the California-Nevada border. It’s right in line with the grid I just laid out.”
“What if the pilot doesn’t remember?” Cam said. “Or if she didn’t even hear you?”
“She’ll have it on tape. They’ll ‚gure it out.”
“Unless she was out of range.”
Newcombe shrugged con‚dently in the dark. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be back.”
18
Six days later they were within two miles of the air‚eld and Ruth split away from Cam as he went to ground in a cluster of red desert rocks. Neither of them spoke. They simply acted. He picked his way into the small maze of boulders and Ruth hunkered down a few yards to his †ank, watching their back-trail as Newcombe trudged past and then took his own position on Cam’s other side.
The triangle was their default and their strength. It was as close to a circle as the three of them could manage, turning eyes in every direction.
The path behind them was hazy with orange dust and the breeze had been erratic today, calming early in the morning. It might be hours before the ‚ne, dry grit settled down again, but they couldn’t afford to wait for the weather to change. Instead, they watched for other dust trails.
To the west, the Sierras were a staggered wall of blue shadows and dusky forest. That color lightened and broke apart as it spilled down into the arid foothills. Their guess was that most survivors would move north or south along the edges of that uneven line, and if Russian troops had come in pursuit, they’d obeyed the same border.
Ruth, Cam, and Newcombe were miles beyond any hint of green. The plague had been catastrophic in this place. Even the weeds and hardy sagebrush were dead. All that stood were a few dry stubs of windswept roots. Several times they’d seen the desiccated remains of grass and wild†owers laid on the ground like stains, brittle and
